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Raspberry basics: Project 00g

Project name: Raspberry PI Zero W board - How to check Raspberry Pi revision number and board version

Tags: Raspberry, Raspberry PI Zero W board, Linux, Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi revision number, Raspberry Pi board version

Attachments: None

In this project, you needed these parts (Dear visitors. You can support our project buy clicking on the links of parts and buying them or donate us to keep this website alive. Thank you):

1. Raspberry PI Zero W board or full kit 1 pc

2. Micro SD card with NOOBS and SD card adapter 1 pc

3. Micro USB power supply (2 A 5V or 5V 3A) 1 pc

4. USB keyboard 1 pc

5. USB mouse 1 pc

6. TV or PC monitor 1 pc

7. HDMI cable 1 pc

8. T-Cobbler Breakout and GPIO Cable 1 pc

9. Micro USB 2.0 OTG Cable 1 pc

10. Mini HDMI to HDMI Adapter (HDMI to Mini HDMI Adapter) 1 pc

11. 4-Port USB 2.0 Hub 1 pc

General

In this project we are going to show how to find the Raspberry Pi revision number and board version.

Each variant of the Raspberry Pi has a different revision number. There are a number of revisions to the Raspberry Pi PCB, so the device you have in front of you could be one of these variants. The changes include mounting holes, modifications to the power supply, different GPIO headers and numbers of USB ports. The Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3 introduced new CPUs and additional memory.

Finding your Raspberry Pi revision number is a useful as it helps to identify what Raspberry Pi model in front of you and, in some cases, where it was manufactured.

Understanding the Raspberry PI Zero W board

You can read more about it here.

Signals and connections of the Raspberry PI Zero W board

Step by Step instruction

1. Setup and preparation

We assume that you have Raspbian OS installed on your Raspberry Pi Zero W board. 

1. Insert your micro SD card with Raspbian OS into the TF card slot on the Raspberry Pi Zero W board. It will only fit one way.
2. Connect Raspberry PI Zero W board mini HDMI port to your TV or Monitor HDMI (DVI) port (use HDMI cable and mini HDMI to HDMI adapter and/or HDMI to DVI adapter).
3. Make sure that your monitor or TV is turned on, and that you have selected the right input (e.g. HDMI/DVI,  etc).
4. Plug in micro USB 2.0 OTG Cable to USB data port of Pi Zero and 4-Port USB 2.0 Hub to micro USB 2.0 OTG Cable. 
5. Plug in your USB mouse and USB keyboard to 4-Port USB 2.0 Hub.
6. If you intend to connect your Raspberry Pi Zero vers 1.2 or vers 1.3 to the internet, connect a WiFi dongle to one of the 4-Port USB 2.0 Hub ports.
7. Connect Micro USB power supply to Raspberry PI Zero board micro USB input.
8. The Raspberry PI desktop will start up.
9. 
10. Go to Raspberry icon-> Preferences -> Raspberry PI configuration
11. 
12. Select Interfaces and make sure that I2C and SPI are enabled. If it’s not enabled, enable it and reboot your Raspberry PI 3 board to begin. We suggest to enable all settings and you will not need to come back to these configuration tool again.
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14. Open Terminal window and type the command: sudo apt-get update
15. Then type the command: sudo apt-get upgrade -y
16. Adding -y to the end of apt-get commands instructs the program to automatically answer yes to any questions rather than waiting for you to type Y or N.
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2. How to find out what hardware revision you Raspberry Pi has

There are two methods:

2.1 Pinout Utility

1. Go to Terminal app and type the command: pinout. You will see the result. This command has been added to new versions of Raspberry Pi. This method provides lots of other information including the position of GPIO numbers on the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO Header and amount of RAM fitted. 
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3. 
   

2.2 cpuinfo

This is the traditional method of finding the Raspberry Pi revision number by reading the cpuinfo file.

1. Go to Terminal app and type the following command: cat /proc/cpuinfo
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3. In this example we have a PCB with a Revision code of 9000c1. That is a "Pi Zero W". For models with multiple cores (Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3) you will see a block of information per core with the Hardware/Revision/Serial numbers at the bottom.

The revision number given in cpuinfo file is the hardware revision number. This is not the same as the Raspberry Pi Rev number sometimes used to descripe updated PCBs.

3. Raspberry Pi model info

With the latest version of Raspbian you can also retrieve the Raspberry Pi model as a string. Go to Terminal app and type the following command: cat /proc/device-tree/model .

This will output the model information. For example, we have: Raspberry Pi Zero W Rev 1.1 . The output will vary depending on what hardware you are running the command on.

Summary

We have learnt how to find the Raspberry Pi revision number and board version.

Libraries in use

• None

Script

• None