Raspberry Pi Zero

Raspberry Pi Zero is the smaller child of the family still running on a full Linux OS. There's yet another smaller member of the family, the Raspberry Pi Pico, but this one is a microcontroller and not a SBC (Single Board Computer).

The Raspberry Pi Zero comes in different flavours:

Zero
This device has 512MB of RAM and a single core CPU running on 1GHz
Zero W
Same as above, but with WiFi on board
Zero 2
This device also has 512MB of RAM but has a more modern Broadcom CPU with quad cores in it, also running on 1GHz.

Due to the chip shortage of the last few years, the Zero 2 is still hard to find. Partly because of the chip shortage but also partly because of individuals/companies taking huge advantage of selling the device way overpriced! I've seen prices of over €100 (June 2023)!!! That's a pity and in fact a bit scandalous too.

All the Zero version have the same 40-pin header layout as their bigger brothers, so there's compatibility among them.

Zero header layout

As said before, also the Zero is following the same header layout of its big brothers. Below is an image showing the header pin-out of a Zero:

Converting the Zero to a Raspberry Pi 3B+

Yes, that's possible! There exists an adaptor where you can "slide in" the Zero and the end result is a Raspberry Pi device with the same form factor as all the other Raspberry Pi's around!

At the bottom of this section you'll see the isolated adapter and the full adapter, including the Zero.

The nice thing about this is that you gain back the RJ45 network connector, so you can use your Zero in a cabled manner!

I really like this solution and in the end it's much cheaper than what some people ask for a Zero on the net. I paid some €35 for both the Zero and the adaptor which, seen the market circumstances of this moment, looks very reasonable.

You can find the adapter on the website of WaveShare. And here's the link to the wiki page of the adapter on the WaveShare website.

Note:
If you want to use the RJ45 network connector, make sure the switch at the back of the adaptor is set to the position indicated by "Zero" otherwise it won't work (default switch position is "USB")!!!

See also the section USB Switch on the wiki page.

Turning off WiFi on the Zero

This looks a bit weird and crazy (yes, I'm a bit crazy...) but if you have the Zero converted to a 3 B+-alike device which has an RJ45 connector, maybe you don't want no WiFi anymore (and BT possibly too).

To disable one or both of the wireless communications, add the following two lines to the config.txt file:

dtoverlay=disable-wifi
dtoverlay=disable-bt

Once rebooted, both WiFi as well as BT will not start up again.

If you want to keep using BT, then don't add the second line of course...

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