Raspberry Pi Zero WH Adds Pre-Soldered 40-Pin GPIO Header

How much can you cram into a 2.6 in x 1.2 in circuit board? You'd presume not much, but the Raspberry Foundation is trying to prove you wrong. First, it added built-in Wi-Fi to its teeny Raspberry Pi Zero and called it the Raspberry Pi Zero W. Now it's adding a 40-pin GPIO header on top of that and calling it, what else, the Raspberry Pi Zero WH. Now tinkerers and makers don't need to get their fingers burned immediately when just getting started.

One of the biggest draws of the Raspberry Pi family of single board computers or SBCs is their expandability. That comes via the standard 40-pin GPIO header on the full-sized boards. But in order to shrink down the size, the Raspberry Pi Zero had to forego the header while still retaining the GPIO contacts.

This raised the barrier to entry a bit for new comers to the RPi Zero. It meant that users would have to solder onto the contacts themselves if they want to make use of GPIO functionality. Not exactly encouraging for beginners and not useful for temporary experiments.

The RPi Zero WH solves that by offering a version that already has the header built-in. This makes it easier to prototype connections, make changes on the fly, and ease the introduction for newbies. It also makes Raspberry Pi's new GPIO Expander software a bit more enticing. Released last month, the GPIO Extender allows easy access to those pins via a USB cable instead of using SSH.

The added convenience does come with a price. Actually two. The first is that the Raspberry Pi Zero WH is naturally taller than the previous two models, though that may not be too much a cost for some makers. It just won't fit with existing enclosures. The other price is literal, with the RPi Zero WH's $18 tag. That's almost double the RPi Zero W, which, in turn, is double the original RPi Zero.

SOURCE: Raspberry Pi