Raspberry Pi 2W

I’ve been having a lot of fun with the Pi Pico 2W. It can host an access point, a web server, be a USB host, and of course has GPIO. And not running an OS means it’s way simpler.

That sounds pretty nice. The same mini PC I paid $195 for in 2023 is now $450. Seems to be life in Canada sometimes. It had caused me to look around though. I have found the Pi Zero 2W to be surprisingly capable for Pi sized jobs.

Hey it's Alex, I was one of the creators of this project. We thought it would be fun to experiment with this odd mix of real, physical media and altering reality with diffusion models. I'm very happy with the results lol! The entire thing can be built for around ~$35-40. Here's our parts list: - Raspberry pi 2w for its low power draw, wifi capabilities, decent memory (512mb), and low cost ($15). Also with a arducam - Cheap TTL Aliexpress thermal printer along with sticker thermal paper - Rotary encoder for switching modes, push button for our shutter, and tactile switch for our power switch - I2C OLED display for display our modes and settings - 2 18650 batteries and a 3amp 5v UPS supply, enabling good battery life and regulation. We also add a 1000uF capacity to guard against current spikes from the printer. We have a longer write up on our devpost: https://devpost.com/software/diffuji?ref_content=user-portfo... We submitted this for Treehacks 2026, and ended up winning the Most Creative grand prize :)

I'm not the GP, but for my ads-b decoder, it runs on a Pi Zero 2W, which at the time cost under $15 and draws very little power. It's convenient having the computer right next to the antenna to avoid thinking about cables. Runs for a couple days on 100Wh of backup battery. (I personally find a ton of value out of the Pico and the zero, and less out of the main main, higher powered raspberry Pi line)

Raspberry Pi Zero 2W running Moode Audio. It's perfect. I have an old iPad running a kiosk-like browser to control but the norm is via web UI remotely.

MobileNetV3 and EfficientDet are othwr possible alternatives to YOLO. I was able to get higher than 1.5 FPS on Raspberry Pi Zero 2W which draws 1W on average. With efficient queuing approach, one can eliminate all bottlenecks.

The Raspberry Pi 4 is still good value at $35 . If your use case can be handled by a Pi 4, it's a good pick at that price range over the competitors. Most of the competitors are going to have similar i/o, but with a Rockchip RK3566 chip which is slower (unless you're using the NPU) The Raspberry Pi Zero 2W is also very interesting for the size and $15 price tag. I also liked the 3A but no one remembers that one. They're older, but everyone else is still playing catch-up, and Raspberry Pi will produce them for a while. I do hope they have a proper $35 board to upgrade to in the future.