If you head over to the website of your favourite Raspberry Pi Approved Reseller today, you may find the new Zero WH available to purchase. But what it is? Why is it different, and what can you do with it?

Raspberry Pi Zero WH

Imagine a Raspberry Pi Zero W. Now add a professionally soldered header. Boom, that’s the Raspberry Pi Zero WH! It’s your same great-tasting Pi, with a brand-new…crust? It’s perfect for everyone who doesn’t own a soldering iron or who wants the soldering legwork done for them.

What you can do with the Zero WH

What can’t you do? Am I right?! The small size of the Zero W makes it perfect for projects with minimal wiggle-room. In such projects, some people have no need for GPIO pins — they simply solder directly to the board. However, there are many instances where you do want a header on your Zero W, for example in order to easily take advantage of the GPIO expander tool for Debian Stretch on a PC or Mac.

GPIO expander in clubs and classrooms

As Ben Nuttall explains in his blog post on the topic:

[The GPIO expander tool] is a real game-changer for Raspberry Jams, Code Clubs, CoderDojos, and schools. You can live boot the Raspberry Pi Desktop OS from a USB stick, use Linux PCs, or even install [the Pi OS] on old computers. Then you have really simple access to physical computing without full Raspberry Pi setups, and with no SD cards to configure.

Using the GPIO expander with the Raspberry Pi Zero WH decreases the setup cost for anyone interested in trying out physical computing in the classroom or at home. (And once you’ve stuck your toes in, you’ll obviously fall in love and will soon find yourself with multiple Raspberry Pi models, HATs aplenty, and an area in your home dedicated to your new adventure in Raspberry Pi. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

Other uses for a Zero W with a header

The GPIO expander setup is just one of a multitude of uses for a Raspberry Pi Zero W with a header. You may want the header for prototyping before you commit to soldering wires directly to a board. Or you may have a temporary build in mind for your Zero W, in which case you won’t want to commit to soldering wires to the board at all.

Your use case may be something else entirely — tell us in the comments below how you’d utilise a pre-soldered Raspberry Pi Zero WH in your project. The best project idea will receive ten imaginary house points of absolutely no practical use, but immense emotional value. Decide amongst yourselves who you believe should win them — I’m going to go waste a few more hours playing SLUG!