Difference Between Raspberry Pi and Arduino

This article is about difference between raspberry pi and arduino. Both boards are very popular among engineering students and professionals. They also have many application in industry. The main reason behind their popularity is massive support from large community and less price. Both reasons make it famous and most widely used development boards in embedded systems applications. Both these boards have its own applications and features. Both are suitable for specific applications. In this article features of both units are explained. I hope you will find this article useful and it will help you choose either arduino or rasberry pi for your electrical engineering project.

Introduction of Raspberry Pi

Raspberry pi is credit card size computer and was developed in United Kingdom by the raspberry pi foundation for improving the computer teaching skills at basic levels in developing countries. It is basically also helpful for improving the programming skills and hardware understanding skills at pre the university level. It has a small size and accessible price for everyone but it is slower then modern desk top computers or lap top. It is still completely Linux base computer and provides all the expected abilities that a have simple low power computer. A raspberry model is shown in figure 1

History of Raspberry Pi

Different generations of raspberry have been developed but the first generation was released in February 2012 with the basic model A and with the name of Raspberry Pi 1. After this several A+ and B+ models was released and a cut down computer model was released in April 2014. Raspberry Pi Zero with general purpose limited input and output abilities have released in November 1015 and price was US$ 35. The Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3 were released in February 2016 and their prices are in between US$ 20 and US$3.All the raspberry models have Broadcom system of chip (SOC) includeswith an ARM and compatible with central processing unit (CPU)and graphic processing unit(GPU).

Features of Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry pi have been developed into several variations versions modelssuch as Raspberry Pi 1, Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3. All these have different features and here this article explains the features of Raspberry Pi 3

Wireless Radio

The Raspberry consist wireless radio that can be only seen with microscope, which is actually Broadcom BCM 43438 chip that provides 2.4 GHz 802.11 n wireless LAN, low energy Bluetooth, and 4.1 classic radio support. It is directly built into the Raspberry Pi board for reducing the cost.

 Antenna:

It consists of an antenna therefore their no need to connect the external antenna with Raspberry Pi.3 and radio is directly connecting to this chip antenna soldered it directly to reduce the size.

SOC (System on Chip):

It consists of Broadcom BCM 2837 system on chip with high performance ARM Cortex-A53 processing cores run at 1.2GHz with 32KB level 1 and 512KB level 2 memory. It also consists of IV graphic processor which is linked with 1GB memory to read the board.

GPIO (General purposes input output):

In consists of 40 general purposes input output header pins for controlling the internally and externally hardware processing system.

USP CHIP:

It also consists of USB port the for USB interfacing facility.

Applications of Raspberry Pi:

1. Raspberry is actually the heart of different project. it is usually used in gadgets show for stratus projects.
2. This can be used as virtual desktop for providing graphical interface desktop in robotic projects.
3. The Raspberry Pi zero is so small and this can be fit anywhere.
4. WhatsApp is the most popular open source platform which have over 600 million users. Through the Raspberry now you can send the message.
5. Currently the digital picture frame is becoming common increasingly but there are so many ways to customize them. Through the Raspberry you can also customized the digital picture.

Introduction of Arduino

Arduino is microcontroller based open source electronics project and its use is very easy as well as software and hardware concern. The Arduino boards can easily read the data inputs sense the light on sensor and turn it into an output for driving the motors, publishing online something and turn on the LED lights etc. Anything you want to tell the board, you just send a set of instructions to the microcontroller. For processing you use the Arduino programming language and Arduino software. It consists of Atmel 8-,16, 32 bit AVR microcontroller with all the necessary components that provides the facility to interact with other circuit. An Arduino board is shown in figure

History of Arduino

Firstly, the Arduino was introduced in 2005 by the design institute in Ivrea Italy and its purpose was to provide the easy and low cost way to the new people for creating the devices that interact with their sensors and actuators. The examples of such devices are thermostat, robot, and motion detector for the intended beginners. At the beginning this was the hardware thesis of a Colombian students named Hernando Barragan and title of this thesis was “Arduino–La rivoluzionedell”. After that a team of five peoples worked on this thesis and made a new platform. They made it lighter, less expensive and open source for learning community.

Feature of Arduino

Here are some key features of Arduino Uno.

1. Arduino is an open source design so being an open source a large community of people can easily find and used in their projects for troubleshooting and debugging purposes.
2. Arduino has a USB interface chip and this USB chip can connect with your computer USB port for making a virtual serial port. This will allow you to use it as a serial device. Through this setup the serial communication has become extremely easy.
3. Arduino has good power management and voltage regulation if we provide it 12 V supply by an external source it can easily regulate the 12v into 5v and 3.3 v. It can also be power on by the USB portwithout any externa source.
4. Arduino has a cheap microcontroller that can be easily find and countless number of hardware features such as timer, PWM pins, multiple sleep modes, external and internal interrupts etc.
5. It has 16 MHz clock and this make the microcontroller speediest in so many applications.
6. For storing your code it has 32 KB flash memory.
7. It has 6 analogs ,32 digital pins for connecting the external hardware with your Arduino and these pins are key for increasing the computing capabilities of your Arduino in real world.
8. It has an ICSP connector for bypassing the USB port and interfacing the Arduino directly as a serial device
9. LED can connect at digital pin 13 for fast and easily debug the code.
10. It has a reset pin on chip for reset the program.

Applications of Arduino:

1. Arduino can be used in so many standalone interactive projects such robotics or it can connect with software of your computer
2. Arduino can be used for the development of home base automation systems such as a Bluetooth which is remotely controlled and operated with Arduino smart phone. With this Arduino smart phone, the remotely controlled switches are controlled which are directly connected to the home appliances.
3. In street lights the high intensity discharge lamps are used (HID) and power saving is not possible in these streets light because the light density required on roads is change from time to time. The light density of these lamps is controlled through Arduino board by changing the voltage of these led lights for throughout the power saving.
4. Arduino can be used for controlling the temperature by connecting the temperature sensor with Arduino board.
5. It can be used in solar panel charge controller for maximum power point tracking.