Pi Zero and RISC OS

I shall be showing a Raspberry Pi Zero running RISC OS at the Bristol RISC OS User Group on Wednesday 13th January.

Here is an image (and a smaller one below):

The display is A 5" HDMI one from adafruit (5V powered from USB) 800×480 at £56 (although RISC OS is doing 1080p at the moment!). It should run for five hours like that – it is consuming about 0.8A at 5V. The Ethernet dongle is a recent purchase at £3.69 post free. The Lindy micro USB OTG hub was £9.96 plus postage. The battery is a 5V Lithium Ion 5000mAh Portable Power Bank from Maplin at £25.

Only 11 seconds from power on to desktop (with a static IP address).

I have written this up here

Any idea of battery life?
With a few buttons, it could be cool for a portable ADFFS gaming system (then no need for Ethernet).

Roughly five hours but not yet checked…

Good…

Actually 4 hours – I fully charged it (6 hours) and then switched it on last night. It lasted for 3½ pints from 1930 to 2330 and while I was watching it (after noting it was down to half a blob – fully charged is four blobs) it shut down. I could have made it last longer by removing the USB/Ethernet dongle (200mA) but it run at 0.83A for 4 hours.

It lasted for 3½ pints from 1930 to 2330

That got a double smile here. Time elapsed in pints. It’s like being at a CAMRA function.

I know rechargables have funny first charge characteristics, try charging for 12-14 hours run test and then charge for 12-14 hours and try again.

I could have made it last longer by removing the USB/Ethernet dongle

Yep, that’s really not needed all the time. Just need to plug it sometimes.
Keyboard is not needed too (just some buttons, mapped to keys or joystick).
The whole could go down to 580 mA.

Possible uses: gaming device, MP3 player (with bad sound) or an embedded system (part of my business).
For my home: ADFFS gaming device :)
Nota: ADFFS forum is down (again).