kolban wrote:@eduperez,
A WiFi dongle is of course the simplest ... by far ... solution. However, my thinking is that the Pi Zero brings the "computer" (i.e. high end embedded device) down to the low-cost embedded price range. When we look at the cost of a WiFi dongle, we see that the average prices is about $10 while we can get ESP8266 modules for about $2.50. I can extrapolate to a time when we may want to build projects that are based upon a Pi Zero and need WiFi but, for some reasons, we want the cost to be minimal ... sacrificing convenience and simplicity for price.
And there is obviously the "I made this myself" factor, or we all would not be here
I all makes sense now, I just wanted to know if there where further reasons I had not understood; thanks.
kolban wrote:Additionally, assuming that Raspberry haven't got exclusive contracts with the SoC makers, I could expect to see Pi Zero clones coming ... and I can imagine a Pi Zero clone coupled with an ESP8266 on a single PCB advertizing itself as Pi Zero compatible with built-in WiFi ... but in order for that to be real, the embedded Linux running on Pi would have to know how to driver a peer ESP8266 ... and I'm assuming that would be at the device driver level.
Well, I would not count on that... Arduino was successful, and there are dozens of clones available; but Raspberry Pi was also successful, and there are no clones (at least, I am not aware of any) even if it has a higher price tag (and a greater margin for a clone), so I would bet there will not be clones for the Raspberry Zero. Just my two cents.