I looked into the specs of the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and see that it’s chip is a SOC of the same cpu used in the Pi3, and with 512Mb RAM.
That is 'n very poweful combo for around R270.
Although you will have to add a USB Hub to your setup, I think it would make a perfect Venus OS (GX) device.
Just wish there was something cheaper available that a RasPiKey for eMMC storage and it would be a perfect setup.
I had the same thoughts. What do you need the RasPiKey for?
The RasPiKey is a eMMC storage device. Think of it as similar to SSD but smaller.
SD card are unreliable and break too fast. They are fine for testing, but for an installation I need something better.
What about booting from a USB flash drive? They’re MUCH more reliable than SD, and you’d need the hub anyways.
Yes this is an option. But Flash drives are also not that reliable (similar too SD I would say)
SSD is another option.
The smallest SSD or hard drive you will find is another R600 and the USB->SATA cable another R150. All that to your R270 Pi and you lost the apeal of a cheaper option.
I need 8Gb/16Gb for a VenusOS install. If I can get that in a eMMC for under R300 that is clearly the better option.
I know if you have drives and stuff laying around that you can use that will work. But if you don’t you need to buy something.
I too would love to get my hands on a RasPiKey for the same reasons you’ve mentioned.
Any idea when they will be available locally?
The Pi Hut is the only place I have seen selling them. £ 21 would be double the Pi Zero 2 
An eMMC is not necessarily any different than an SD card, in fact, you can use the same physical interface (solder wires from the SD connector to your emmc chip.) That said, I have run emonPi on the cheapest SD card I could find for 7+ years now, and never had an SD card failure. But there are some tricks built-in that minimizes SD writes on that system. I have had other rPis that killed SD-cards every 2 months, but that was probably due to an ancient firmware issue, and I have not had any such problems in the last ~4 years.
SSDs are a lot better in that they have much more sophisticated controllers that actually implement wear leveling correctly (I am not convinced that most SD cards, even those that claim they have wear leveling implements it correctly). USB flash drives are usually the same as SD cards, the only exception is USB SSDs.
Both eMMC and USB flash drives have come up anecdotally in the Pi forums for years as ways of mitigating SD card issues. There are few objective studies, but the standard SD card performs much less reliably than a standard flash drive. Most people saying they’re the same are comparing name-brand SD cards of almost 10x the price with garden-variety flash drives. Most comparison go on speed, but longevity is actually the important thing in most cases.
It goes something like this: standard SD < USB flash < “extreme” SSD < USB SSD < UASP SSD, with the cost increasing dramatically at “extreme” SSD and later.
So you’re not wrong, but with R150 (half a W2) in your pocket, it makes no sense to go extreme SSD or better. But you could drastically improve over a standard SD card.
I guess the easy option is also to look at those SD cards that is made for apps class (A1 or A2).
But yes R150 or less would be a perfect match for a PZ2W
I agree.
I was lucky to get my hands on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W in January (Micro Robotics had a small bunch available that was sold out in 2 days), but after a quick 30min play I saw that I need to have much more time to figure out how to get VenusOS running on it.
5 months on without any time to look at it again, some guys on the Victron forum has an image built for it and a gist to follow to get bluetooth to work.
Voila! My Zero2 is running VenusOS and it seems to be working fine.
Something intresting is that Micro Robotics now has a Amlogic Cortex-A53 Zero shape device with 2Gb DDR4 RAM and a 8Gb eMMC storage as well for R700.
I see in the latest beta change log for Venus 2.90 it is listed that it now supports the PI Zero 2W
Yeah, Mark Bath really took that project and ran with it!