The operating system for our installation
Raspberry Pi is a full-featured computer with an operating system
Arduino is a development kit with a simple microcontroller.
Hardware
When you look at an Arduino next to a Raspberry Pi, it’s clear that the hardware differs quite a bit between those two.
Power
The Arduino’s power supply requirements are very simple; you can plug it into your computer or a battery pack, and it will start running code immediately. If the power is disconnected, it will stop; there’s no need to run a shut-down process. The Raspberry Pi, on the other hand, because it has a more full-featured computing system in place, should be shut down like a regular computer, and can be damaged by power cuts.
Both the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi have a very low power draw and can be run for a very long time without using much electricity
Connectivity
The Raspberry Pi comes ready to be connected to the internet; it has a built-in ethernet port, and it’s very easy to get a USB wifi dongle to give it wireless connectivity as well (you can see a very tiny one in the image below). This is one of the reasons why Pi is the device of choice for things like personal web servers, printer servers, and VPNs.
The Arduino, on the other hand, doesn’t have any built-in capability for connectivity. If you want to connect it to the internet, you’ll need to add an extra piece of hardware that includes an ethernet port. If you want wifi connectivity, you’ll need a different piece of hardware again. Because the Arduino is meant for hardware projects instead of software ones, it needs a bit of tinkering to get it connected.
USB
Because the Arduino isn’t meant to communicate with computers, it doesn’t come standard with any USB ports that you can use for this type of communication. A single port can be used to connect the Arduino to your computer via your computer’s USB port, but that’s it. The Raspberry Pi, on the other hand, has four USB ports that you can use to connect it to a router, a printer, an external hard drive, or a wide variety of other devices.
Software
To really understand when you’d want to use one board or the other, you’ll need to know what each one can do, and a lot of that is dependent on the software.
To complicate the issue, the Arduino doesn’t come with any software per se. It has very basic capabilities to interpret the code that it receives and alter the functions of the hardware that it’s connected to, but the board doesn’t have an operating system or any sort of interface besides the Arduino integrated development environment (IDE).
What this means in practice is that you need to create the software that runs on the Arduino.
Using the IDE, you’ll create a set of commands that the Arduino will interpret and enact.
A simple set of instructions could say something like “turn the red light on for three seconds, turn it off, turn the green light on for three seconds, turn it off, repeat.”
I think that the Arduino is a great choice for anyone interested in electronics.
In contrast, the Raspberry Pi comes stocked with a fully functional operating system called Raspbian. This OS is based on Linux and was created specifically for the Pi. There are a number of other operating systems that we can use with the board, most of which are Linux-based, but Android can also be installed.
Operating systems aren’t the only pieces of software that the Pi runs. There are also a number of useful apps that you can use to accomplish different tasks. One of the most common uses of a Raspberry Pi is as a media server.
Of course, you can write your own programs for the Raspberry Pi as well, and that’s one of the best reasons to get one: to learn to code. Python is the recommended language for the Pi, but C, C++, Java, and Ruby are all pre-installed on the board.
Arduino can be tweaked to support other languages, the native Arduino language is the best choice; if we’re looking to learn a more useful language, the Pi will give you more options, I learned C#.
Choosing our technology
Raspberry Pi 
The Raspberry Pi is just a mini computer with a compact PCB (printed circuit board) with the size of a package of cigarettes. The Raspberry Pi is handy to understand the basics of computer technology but also to control complex stuff like devices. Not really special that the device is popular with hobbyists and other interested people.
Because of that, the Raspberry Pi is working on an operating system, it works just a little bit easier than an Arduino or Particle Photon for example. Also, the Raspberry is handy if you just want to use it as a mini computer for movies, music or internetting, etc. The Raspberry Pi doesn’t have a memory like a normal computer, for this you need an SD-card. Here you can put an operating system. Noobs is recommended to use for that installation. Here you can choose multiple operating systems like Raspbian or Windows 10. For the hobbyists, the Raspberry Pi has some pins, called GPIO’s. With these pins you can control stuff like LED strips, sensors or other devices. There are a lot of tutorials to work with the Raspberry Pi on the Internet.
Specifications (Raspberry Pi 3 Model B):
De Raspberry Pi 3 Model B is the following model after Raspberry Pi 2 model B since February 2016. The new functions on the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B are:
- 1.2 GHz 64-bit quad core ARMv8 CPU
- 802.11n Wireless LAN (Wi-Fi)
- Bluetooth 4.1
- Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
What does Raspberry Pi 2 & 3 have in common:
- 1GB Ram
- 4 USB ports
- 40 GPIO pins (General-Purpose inputs/outputs)
- HDMI port
- Ethernet port
- 3.5 mm audio jack (mini-jack) and composite video
- Camera interface (CSI)
- Display interface (DSI)
- Micro SD lock
- Video Core IV 3D graphics core
Arduino
Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. Arduino boards are able to read inputs – light on a sensor, a finger on a button, or a Twitter message – and turn it into an output – activating a motor, turning on an LED, publishing something online. You can tell your board what to do by sending a set of instructions to the microcontroller on the board. To do so you use the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring), and the Arduino Software (IDE), based on Processing.
Specifications
- Microcontroller: ATmega328
- Operating Voltage: 5V
- Input Voltage (recommended): 7-12V
- Input Voltage (limits): 6-20V
- Digital I/O Pins: 14 (of which 6 provide PWM output)
- Analog Input Pins: 6
- DC Current per I/O Pin: 40 mA
- DC Current for 3.3V Pin: 50 mA
- Flash Memory: 32 KB of which 0.5 KB used by bootloader
- SRAM: 2 KB (ATmega328)
- EEPROM: 1 KB (ATmega328)
- Clock Speed: 16 MHz
Raspberry Pi vs Arduino
|
Arduino Uno |
Raspberry Pi 2 Model B |
| Cost (base model) |
20 |
39 |
| Processor |
16MHz AVR ATmega328P |
900 MHz Broadcom ARM Cortex-A7 |
| Storage |
32 KB |
n/a |
| RAM |
2 KB |
1 GB |
| I/O pins |
20 |
17 |
| OS |
n/a |
Raspbian, other varieties of Linux, Android |
| Languages |
Arduino, Java, C, C++ |
Python, C, C++, Java, Ruby |
| Best for |
Hardware/prototyping |
Software/server |
| Power supply |
5V USB or DC jack |
5V USB |
Conclusions:
We chose Arduino because it fits the best with what we want to do since we want to use buttons on the installation together with a screen and a hand scanner made of a capacitive sensor with LEDs inside.It will also have a PIR and the installation it’s reacting on the Infra Red. We will program the installation with the use of Arduino through Firmata and Processing since we are all familiar with it and own one. In our opinion Arduino it’s more stable and easy to use in combination with the laptop.
We are also trying to find the best materials, to make research and to test them.We will attach a PIR sensor, LEDs, a capacitive sensor. We will have a screen and a hand scan also.
Why?
- Each touch sensor requires only one wire connected to it.
- Can be concealed under any nonmetallic material.
- Inexpensive
- Can be easily used in place of a button.
- Can detect a hand from a few inches away, if required.
Making research on different websites, watching tutorials and testing will help us to find the best way to build our installation.
For now, we have a clear idea of what we want to use and on how we will make it but we are still making research on how to program it and how the technology behind it works.
We want to create devices timers and sensors – the Arduino is the way to go; its low-level interface and easy I/O connections make it the best way to go if we want to build something.
The Raspberry Pi makes a very good server or data storage system and is great for learning to program in traditional languages. We don’t want to communicate with the other computers so it’s not especially for us.
@izabelatyprowicz
Project Fat 