Hello. Many of us want to start a project but don't know which controller board to use. There are a number of them in the market among which the most popular are Arduino and Raspberry Pi. We all get confused between them. What should I use? Which one is better for me? Why this? Here is the only answer: "It depends on your project." I will show you how in this instructable. I will not go over any of the technical specs in detail and will just give an outline to make it easy for you to choose between them. Let's go...

Step 1: Knowing the Basics

So, what are these? Arduino has a microcontroller (ATmega series) whereas Raspberry Pi has a microprocessor (ARM 32-bit processors). Now, what are they and what do they do? So, the microcontroller is the one used to control things whereas the microprocessor is the one used to process data. So the microcontroller has muscular power and the microcontroller has brainy power. Coming to some info about them,

Arduino doesn't have an operating system of its own whereas the Pi runs a Linux-based operating system. It means that you could connect a keyboard, mouse and a monitor or tv and the Pi could be your own mini comp.

The Arduino can run only one program at a time whereas the Pi can run many programs at the same time. The Arduino has a power port and a USB port whereas the Pi has 4 USB ports, an HDMI port, an AUX port, an ethernet port, an SD card slot and a charging port. Basically, it's a Single Board Computer.

Both of them also have some GPIO (General Purpose Input Output) pins to control the outer world. You can connect all sorts of motors and sensors to these pins for input and output. The pins on the Arduino are more and can give more power as it is good at controlling. The Arduino pins give 5v output whereas pins on Raspberry Pi give about 3.5v output.

Step 2: Choosing One

So, it solely depends on your projects. If your project uses sensors, actuators, servos etc. then Arduino must be better, the reason being its ability to control things. This doesn't mean that the Pi can not control these, but it would be very complicated. With Arduino, it is very simple to control this kind of stuff. But, if your project needs to process data like visual data or needs to handle a database, then it would be better to use Pi, as it is good at processing. So it depends on the parts of your project and its functions. So I think that now you will be able to choose between these. If you found this instructable useful in any way, then please comment below. If you have any queries, please comment too.