Arduino Vs Raspberry Pi
Hello friends, I hope you all are fine and enjoying your lives. Today, I am going to share a comparison titled Arduino Vs Raspberry Pi. Actually, I have been receiving a lot of emails and comments from new engineering students that "we are new in embedded and we want to start our project so please tell us which one is better Arduino or Raspberry Pi?" So, I thought to write a post on Arduino Vs Raspberry Pi and in this post, I am going to make a detailed comparison between the two and will let you know, which one you should use in your project and why?
So, I hope that you are all aware of or at least have heard about these two boards, which are Arduino and Raspberry Pi. If you haven't heard yet then you must have a look at Arduino Official Site and Raspberry Pi Official Site. They will give you a basic overview of what these boards are. Anyhow, I am going to start it from the very basics so that you guys won't get into much trouble. So, let's get started with Arduino Vs Raspberry Pi:
Arduino Vs Raspberry Pi
I have created few points below and in each of these points, I have made the difference between these two boards. I have also mentioned their strengths and weaknesses and which one to use. Obviously, they both have their own importance so we can't say that one is better than the other. Instead, we are making a comparison between the two and then you will get a clear idea of which one you should use for your project. The selection of your controller board actually depends entirely on the nature of your project. Am I getting far :O don't worry if it's more to digest about Arduino Uno R3 Vs Raspberry PI 3, I am explaining them below in detail. :D
1. History
Arduino:
- The idea of Arduino was first presented by Massimo Banzi in Italy. That's why it's written Made in Italy on each of these boards. :)
- Banzi was a teacher at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea and the reason for designing these boards was to help his students by giving them an easy-to-use platform.
- So that, students don't waste much time over soldering etc and spend more time in designing the algorithms.
Raspberry Pi:
- Raspberry Pi was first invented by Eben Upton in the United Kingdom.
- He was also a teacher and he has the same reason for developing these boards.
- He also wanted to help his students so that they learn more out of it.
- Upton was a Professor at the University of Cambridge.
Obviously, they both have co-founders, who have helped them a lot in bringing these ideas to existence. So, let's move on to the next step of this Arduino Vs Raspberry Pi comparison.
2. Nature of Arduino & Raspberry Pi
Arduino:
- The Arduino boards are actually Microcontrollers boards but in a very easy-to-use form.
- Have you ever worked on PIC Microcontroller, Atmel or 8051 Microcontroller?
- If you have worked on standalone microcontrollers, you must be aware of Microcontroller basic circuit, which includes crystal oscillator and pull-up resistors, capacitors etc.
- Moreover, you also need the programmer/burner hardware using which you upload your code into these microcontrollers.
- But in Arduino, you don't need to use any of these. Arduino comes with a built-in programmer and an onboard basic circuit for powering up the microcontroller.
- So, what you need to do is simply plug Arduino board and start testing your code.
- So, in simple words, Arduino is nothing but a simple microcontroller board.
Raspberry Pi:
- Now if we talk about Raspberry Pi, it's a mini-computer and is actually termed a microprocessor.
- Raspberry Pi has onboard RAM, ROM, i/O Ports, USB Ports, HDMI Port etc.
- Seems quite powerful than Arduino but don't come to a conclusion right away :)
- But yes Raspberry Pi is like a small computer, obviously, it's not comparable with your Laptop or PC but it's really powerful.
- And the beauty of it lies in the small size and low price.
- The latest Raspberry Pi even has a RAM of around 3GB, which is quite a lot. I am using Note 3 Mobile and it has 3GB RAM. So, now you can get an idea of what it is capable of.
- As it's a small computer so you must be thinking what its operating system. When it comes out of the factory, it has no operating system on it but one can install any operating system like Linux, Windows etc.
- Normally it is used with Linux and its current operating system is called Raspbian.
So, from the above discussion, we concluded that Arduino is a Microcontroller board while Raspberry Pi is a mini-computer. Next, we are going to have a look at the type of Arduino Vs Raspberry Pi.
3. Types of Arduino Vs Raspberry Pi
Arduino:
- The first board developed by the Arduino company was Arduino UNO which uses Atmega328 Microcontroller but later on, they have developed many new boards.
- For example, now we have Arduino Ethernet Shield, Arduino Wifi Shield using these we can provide Internet access to our system.
- Recently they have also developed the Arduino YUN board, which also supports Linux just like Raspberry Pi.
- Arduino Due is another board that works on a 32-bit instruction set.
- So, in short, there are a lot of Arduino boards and by combining different boards you can accomplish anything.
- Suppose, you want to control your Fan via Wifi then you can use Arduino UNO with Arduino Wifi shield and you can easily design this IoT project and can control the fan over WiFi.
Raspberry Pi:
- Raspberry Pi doesn't have different boards for different tasks like Arduino.
- Like once there was Raspberry Pi Model A but then they added some more functionality like increased the RAM end so we have Raspberry Pi 2, Raspberry Pi 3 Raspberry Pi 4 etc.
- So, you can think of Raspberry Pi as a mobile, whose models come out with more enhancement.
- As I told you earlier Raspberry Pi is a small computer board so it already has everything in it like Wifi, Ethernet, USB Host etc.
- Raspberry Pi has recently launched a Microcontroller board called Raspberry Pi Pico, which is available for $4.
4. Programming Code
Arduino:
- For programming Arduino boards, Arduino has launched official software called Arduino IDE.
- Arduino uses C programming language with a slight difference in syntax from the original C.
- It has an extensive list of libraries(mostly third-party) for interfacing sensors and modules.
Raspberry Pi:
- Raspberry Pi can be programmed in any high-level programming language i.e. python, C# etc.
- Normally, python is used for programming purposes.
Arduino Vs Raspberry Pi - Which one you should prefer?
For a new Engineering student, who has just started his project. He always wonders which one I should use among these two. Should I go with Arduino or should I start working on Raspberry Pi? It's really a big question if you are new in this field. So, let me tell you one thing first, no one is better than the other, Arduino and Raspberry Pi both have their own importance. Now which one you should use, entirely depends on the nature of your project. So, let's take a look at projects for both of these boards. I think this Arduino Vs Raspberry Pi comparison is now going to take an interesting turn. :)
Arduino:
- Whenever you are working on some pure hardware-related project, in which you need to use different sensors, need to move your motors or actuators etc. then you should always go for Arduino because Arduino is a microcontroller and its best for hardware equipment controlling.
- That's why in most of the Electrical, Electronics, Mechatronics and Mechanical Projects, Arduino is preferred.
- It's not like you can't control sensors or motors on Raspberry Pi but it's too difficult in Raspberry Pi and quite easy in Arduino.
- Moreover, with Arduino, you can attach as many sensors as you want. In simple words, Arduino has a lot of I/Os.
- Once I have to work on a project, in which I have to control fifty relays so in that case I have used Arduino Mega 2560 which has around 60 input/Output Pins.
- But you can't control fifty relays with Raspberry Pi.
- So, in all the hardware projects where you don't need to do cloud computing, IoT etc. it's always preferred to use Arduino boards.
Raspberry Pi:
- Raspberry Pi is mostly used in computer software projects i.e. IoT, cloud computing etc.
- Like you have a project in which you need to send data over to some network, then in these types of projects, your first choice should be Raspberry Pi.
- I once had a project in which I have to design an online Home Automation system.
- So, in such projects, we just need to interface few sensors which we can do with the Raspberry Pi as it has few Input/Output Pins.
- But the main part of such projects is to send sensors data over to some network so Raspberry Pi is the right choice here.
- Although we can also use Arduino YUN in such projects as well but because Raspberry Pi is programmed in python so it's more flexible to use when it comes to cloud computing.
- Similarly, if you want to design some Face recognition project then Raspberry Pi comes in handy because we can easily install openCV on it as it's an OS (LINUX), we can install anything we want.
So, that's a kind of an overview on Arduino Vs Raspberry Pi, which I think you guys must have enjoyed. It was quite boring so that's why I have tried my best to make it as interesting as I can, but still, if you find it boring then I can't do anything. :) So, that's all about Arduino Vs Raspberry Pi, I hope you guys have got something out of it. Will see you guys in the next tutorial. Till then take care and have fun. :)