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The arduino and the raspi aren't realistically competitors to each other. At all. The raspi requires ~500-800mA to run, which generally means buying batteries

by blhack 14y ago

The arduino and the raspi aren't realistically competitors to each other. At all. The raspi requires ~500-800mA to run, which generally means buying batteries and DC-DC converters meant for hobby planes/cars and butchering a USB cable to power it. The arduino requires ~10mA (without any accessories) and can be powered by a 9V battery and a LM7805 voltage regulator. All in cost is <$5. We have 3 raspis in our lab. Mine, and two that have been donated by people who bought them, and then couldn't figure out what to do with them. We have a stack of arduinos that get used constantly. The raspi is great for "hobbyists", that is: people who are making media centers for their television so that they can stream TV shows to it. The arduino is made for hackers, interactive artists, etc. (My current project with the raspi is a telepresence robot. Something that isn't even possible with an arduino. They're really not competitors. The raspi is just a cheap linux box that you run python on. The arduino is a prototyping platform for Atmel AVRs that you write firmware for.)

cookingrobot 14y ago
Do you have an opinion on which platform is better for projects that need to connect to the internet over wifi? Other than the networking issue, Arduino is more than powerful enough for my purposes. I don't really want to shell out $80 for a wifi shield, so I was thinking it might be better to just switch to RaspPi + a cheap usb dongle. Any thoughts?
- blhack 14y ago
  If you absolutely have to have WiFi, then you might consider the raspi, since it is cheaper. But...cost on it is going to be ~$50. ($35 + $12 for a wifi chip). That's getting close to the cost of the wifi shield, and if you already know the arduino platform, then I would stick with it. I don't know, for instance, if PWM is yet support on the raspi (or ever will be, since it's not an RTOS)
- jrockway 14y ago
  It depends on what software you want to use, what software you want to write, how much power you have available, how many production units you'll want, etc. If you want to do a one-off and have AC power, use the Pi. If you want to make a billion of these and fit them in a tiny box with 4 AA batteries, the AVR is going to be a better choice. But Linux + Python is easier to program than AVR firmware, so it's going to take a lot of units before the AVR pays for its difficult software development with its reduced parts cost. (Really, you should be using ARM, not AVR. It costs the same but it's a modern architecture.)
  - yitchelle 14y ago
    code for Linux and code for AVR are two totally different beasts. With AVR, I feel that you could just drum up a quick hack and have code running within a couple of hours. With Linux, I always felt that you need at least a couple of days to get things to going (eg, having a root fs structured, choose a kernel, make sure that your memory map is set up correctly etc). Maybe, I have been away from embedded Linux for too long and the goal post have shifted towards a better location.
    - jrockway 14y ago
      The Raspberry Pi is desktop Linux. You install Ubuntu, connect a monitor and keyboard, and write your Python script.
Florin_Andrei 14y ago
> The arduino requires ~10mA Not to mention you could delve into bare-metal AVR programming from there, and work with tiny devices that consume literally nothing as long as they have not received a wake-up signal.

by blhack 14y ago

cookingrobot 14y ago

Do you have an opinion on which platform is better for projects that need to connect to the internet over wifi? Other than the networking issue, Arduino is more than powerful enough for my purposes. I don't really want to shell out $80 for a wifi shield, so I was thinking it might be better to just switch to RaspPi + a cheap usb dongle. Any thoughts?

blhack 14y ago
If you absolutely have to have WiFi, then you might consider the raspi, since it is cheaper. But...cost on it is going to be ~$50. ($35 + $12 for a wifi chip). That's getting close to the cost of the wifi shield, and if you already know the arduino platform, then I would stick with it. I don't know, for instance, if PWM is yet support on the raspi (or ever will be, since it's not an RTOS)
jrockway 14y ago
It depends on what software you want to use, what software you want to write, how much power you have available, how many production units you'll want, etc. If you want to do a one-off and have AC power, use the Pi. If you want to make a billion of these and fit them in a tiny box with 4 AA batteries, the AVR is going to be a better choice. But Linux + Python is easier to program than AVR firmware, so it's going to take a lot of units before the AVR pays for its difficult software development with its reduced parts cost. (Really, you should be using ARM, not AVR. It costs the same but it's a modern architecture.)
- yitchelle 14y ago
  code for Linux and code for AVR are two totally different beasts. With AVR, I feel that you could just drum up a quick hack and have code running within a couple of hours. With Linux, I always felt that you need at least a couple of days to get things to going (eg, having a root fs structured, choose a kernel, make sure that your memory map is set up correctly etc). Maybe, I have been away from embedded Linux for too long and the goal post have shifted towards a better location.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    The Raspberry Pi is desktop Linux. You install Ubuntu, connect a monitor and keyboard, and write your Python script.

Florin_Andrei 14y ago

> The arduino requires ~10mA Not to mention you could delve into bare-metal AVR programming from there, and work with tiny devices that consume literally nothing as long as they have not received a wake-up signal.