In 2016 I will be instructing some courses at the Kre8now Makerspace in Lexington, introducing people to the Arduino and Raspberry Pi microcontrollers. While I would certainly recommend taking both courses for the full picture, the reality is that you have a project in mind, and would like to decide whether to realize it with the Arduino, or with the Raspberry Pi. The problem is, how do you know which one to use without experience with both?
A lot of different online resources seem to have different measures to help you choose which one to use. Make Magazine, for example endeavors to number the amount of tasks for the project, and if
Arduino
Right now this may sound like a commercial for the Raspberry-Pi, but I assure you it's not!
Sure, the Raspberry Pi has more options, but that's because it's a full-fledged computing system and needs these services! The Raspberry pi runs a version of Linux which is very similar to any desktop/laptop version-- you can install the same programs and more from the same set of commands.
So why not just choose the Raspberry Pi for every project? Well, for applications that are primary electrical and autonomous (self-controlled) I'd choose the Arduino nearly every time, because it is far more idiot-proof when it comes to electricity, and far more flexible. Without going into too much detail, the Arduino is far more foolproof to higher voltages, whereas if you give the RPi anything beyond it's recommend 5v... expect your RPi project to be placed on hold. Also, the Arduino very simply handles analog input/output, whereas you must "trick" the Raspberry-Pi into doing analog signals, by either simulating them or buying additional equipment. Even when working on Raspberry Pi I often "sketch out" my designs in the Arduino because it's so easy to work with!
My second and last comparison would be this:
2) Appliance vs. Computer System
When I say appliance, you probably have some clear pictures in your mind: A toaster, a refrigerator, and even smaller appliances like a blow dryer, a cat feeder, or an alarm clock. Whereas with computing systems, more complicated systems should come to mind: video game consoles, robotic systems, and anything with the prefix "smart". From what I've already described you should be able to see more clearly why the two boards paint these distinctions. The Pi allows for easier networking, processing and display, whereas the Arduino is a simple wizard of electricity.
As a last measure of helping you decide, here's a pool of 5 projects each that best suit one board over the other, along with some helpful links!
Arduino:
Guitar Pedal, Small and simple autonomous robot, door-lock system, Plant waterer, motion alarm
Raspberry-Pi:
Media Center, Retro game emulator, Multi-core cluster, security camera,
internet radio
However, if you're dead-set on accomplishing a project with a board in mind, I encourage you to do so! There's truly only a few impossibilities that prevent you from crossing the streams, and often times doing so leads to new discoveries for you about your project and your board. Give it a try!
If you're interested in finding out more about Arduino and Raspberry-Pi projects, I recommend checking out instructables, and the two boards' subreddits. It also doesn't hurt to check out selections at shop sites to see what they offer. Adafruit in particular often has tutorials for both boards.
A lot of different online resources seem to have different measures to help you choose which one to use. Make Magazine, for example endeavors to number the amount of tasks for the project, and if
I personally think that a lot of the measures are bit far-fetched, so the natural thing to do is to add my own far-fetched measures of which board to use. And here's the first:
1) Consider your ports.
Now if you don't have much computer/AV know-how, that may have been a confusing bit of advice, but what I mean to is to carefully consider the inputs and outputs of each board-- they tell you a surprisingly amount about its capabilities and the simplicity in carrying out those capabilities. To make this more apparent, let's consider the ports on both devices:
Raspberry-Pi
- HDMI output
- direct 1/4 inch audio jack
- ~4 USB ports
- Camera port/display port
- Ethernet port
- micro-SD slot
- ~40 GPIO pins
- ~10 digital I/O pins
- ~5 Analog input pins
Right now this may sound like a commercial for the Raspberry-Pi, but I assure you it's not!
Sure, the Raspberry Pi has more options, but that's because it's a full-fledged computing system and needs these services! The Raspberry pi runs a version of Linux which is very similar to any desktop/laptop version-- you can install the same programs and more from the same set of commands.
So why not just choose the Raspberry Pi for every project? Well, for applications that are primary electrical and autonomous (self-controlled) I'd choose the Arduino nearly every time, because it is far more idiot-proof when it comes to electricity, and far more flexible. Without going into too much detail, the Arduino is far more foolproof to higher voltages, whereas if you give the RPi anything beyond it's recommend 5v... expect your RPi project to be placed on hold. Also, the Arduino very simply handles analog input/output, whereas you must "trick" the Raspberry-Pi into doing analog signals, by either simulating them or buying additional equipment. Even when working on Raspberry Pi I often "sketch out" my designs in the Arduino because it's so easy to work with!
My second and last comparison would be this:
2) Appliance vs. Computer System
When I say appliance, you probably have some clear pictures in your mind: A toaster, a refrigerator, and even smaller appliances like a blow dryer, a cat feeder, or an alarm clock. Whereas with computing systems, more complicated systems should come to mind: video game consoles, robotic systems, and anything with the prefix "smart". From what I've already described you should be able to see more clearly why the two boards paint these distinctions. The Pi allows for easier networking, processing and display, whereas the Arduino is a simple wizard of electricity.
As a last measure of helping you decide, here's a pool of 5 projects each that best suit one board over the other, along with some helpful links!
Arduino:
Guitar Pedal, Small and simple autonomous robot, door-lock system, Plant waterer, motion alarm
Raspberry-Pi:
Media Center, Retro game emulator, Multi-core cluster, security camera,
internet radio
However, if you're dead-set on accomplishing a project with a board in mind, I encourage you to do so! There's truly only a few impossibilities that prevent you from crossing the streams, and often times doing so leads to new discoveries for you about your project and your board. Give it a try!
If you're interested in finding out more about Arduino and Raspberry-Pi projects, I recommend checking out instructables, and the two boards' subreddits. It also doesn't hurt to check out selections at shop sites to see what they offer. Adafruit in particular often has tutorials for both boards.
Nice - are the classes going to overlap. I have two of the model B Pi's. One is a backup server running owncloud. The other is whatever I am playing with at the time.
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