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Difference Between Arduino & Raspberry Pi

Differences Between Arduino & Raspberry Pi

Arduino & Raspberry Pi are both program development boards, mainly designed for teaching programming. But there use in DIY electronics has made them more famous. You may have heard about these in DIY projects videos over youtube or in general.

Difference Between Arduino & Raspberry Pi

Before going into the differences between these two boards lets try to discuss them a little bit as they both do the same function but they are very different than each other.

Arduino

Arduino is a microcontroller based development platform. It runs a specific code installed by the user to do a specific task. It is a plug-n-play device i.e. it does not need any peripherals. All you need to do is to just plug it in the USB port of your PC or laptop and you are good to go. it has a limited size of RAM & ROM.

Arduino is very easy to program. It consists of numerous onboard pins able to control various types of sensors and actuators with ease.   It runs on Arduino language, which is similar to C, C++ with available libraries for each module (sensors & actuators). So overall programming is easy on Arduino but it cannot do multi-tasking.

Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi is a microprocessor-based developing platform. It is a full computer running on a modified version of Linux known Raspbian Operating system.

As I have said, that Raspberry Pi is a full computer, so it needs peripheral like a mouse, keyboard and screen to operate. It has a large size of ram as compared to Arduino. It has a memory slot which enables it to have huge space.

The positive point about Raspberry is that it can do multitasking just like any other computer. You can run several programs in parallel without any lag. So automation becomes easy using such boards. Other than that It has built-in networking modules such as Ethernet and Wifi for internet connectivity.

Raspberry Pi uses python or java language for program development which is a little complex compared to C in Ardiono. also, an interface of external modules needs specific libraries to be installed in Raspberry Pi. 

Differences Between Arduino & Raspberry Pi

Arduino Raspberry Pi
It is a microcontroller based development board It is a microprocessor based platform.
It is a plug & Play device. It needs other peripherals such as mouse, keyboard & Screen
Very easy to interface other sensors and actuators. Interfacing sensors require their specific libraries to be installed
It is cheaper as compared to Raspberry Pi. It is an expensive device as it is a full computer
It needs external networking modules that need to be configured using programming. It can be easily connected to the Internet using built-in Ethernet or wifi modules.
It has a fixed and limited amount of onboard memory up to 32kb. It has a large memory with an available external memory slot for up to 64GB
It has only one USB port for connection with a computer to flash the program code. It has a few USB ports for external devices
It can do a single task at a given time. Raspberry Pi can do multitasking in a program.
It uses a modified version of C language. It Uses Python, Java programming languages
Arduino does not have an output display function It has a builtin graphics card so it can provide an output display feature
Arduino is capable of supporting digital as well as analog input in their specific I/o pins It only supports digital inputs & has no analog input support features.
It does not need an OS, all it needs is program code. It needs to run on an Operating System known as Raspbian

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