Rasberry Pi and other electronic things

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tim_ber

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Can someone tell me in dummy terms (I've Googled and still don't understand) what:
Rasberry Pi things are?
Arduino things are?

Cheers
 
tim_ber said:
Can someone tell me in dummy terms (I've Googled and still don't understand) what:
Rasberry Pi things are?
Arduino things are?
Click to expand...

The Raspberry Pi is a very small (credit card sized) and very cheap (£30, ish) computer. It uses an ARM processor, like most tablets and smartphones, and runs a variety of operating systems, mostly Linux-derived. It's not desperately powerful, but good if you have an application for which portability is important. The biggest weakness of the Pi is probably input and output: if you want to monitor or control anything you will almost certainly have to faff about with add-on boards.

Arduino systems use a microcontroller instead of a microporcessor. That means that they are generally far, far better at interfacing with things, but have much more restricted computing power and run a single program rather than an operating system plus applications.

If you want to make a cheap chart plotter or media player for your boat, a Pi is the one to use. If you want to make an autopilot or a wind instrument, Arduino.
 
Slight Fred drift. I think I remember hearing about raspberry pi being invented to get Kids into programming. Would it be suitable for my seven year old grandson who loves computer games and what could he do with it?
 
JumbleDuck said:
If you want to make a cheap chart plotter or media player for your boat, a Pi is the one to use. If you want to make an autopilot or a wind instrument, Arduino.
Click to expand...

You might be surprised at the amount of software guff that goes into top end autopilots! They use ARMs, but lesser ones than the RPi. The latest wind instruments that transmit on NMEA 2000 use ARMs as well now to have the space and processing power to handle the N2K stack.
 
I keep seeing the things advertised (for kids often), and I am getting into electronics as a hobby, but I have NO IDEA what these things are or what SIMPLE applications I could use them for.

What are they replacing, for example?

Way beyond my means or desires to make autopilots etc, just want to know roughly what they are / what I as a low level hobby person could start doing with one to learn what it does?

Make LEDs turn on or off? Make simple burglar alarms?

Any ideas? Do you see the level of ignorance I am coming from?

Cheers
 
nimbusgb said:
Yup but 7 it a tad young unless he's particularly bright I think.

robotics or machine control is one way to go.

Balloon photography.

GPS tracking.

An ABS and ESP system for his tricycle?

all sorts of stuff
Click to expand...

Are you saying one of these pi or arduino things could be used to make the balloon camera and gps tracking things? That would be cool. Could you tell me where I go / how I begin to learn how to do those things?
Ps. I am older than 7, but not necessarily brighter.
 
tim_ber said:
IMake LEDs turn on or off? Make simple burglar alarms?
Any ideas? Do you see the level of ignorance I am coming from?
Click to expand...

Arduino would be the way to go if you want to do that. You could use a RPi, but it is way overkill for that kind of thing. They are as powerful as a desktop PC from a few years ago, but running Linux instead of anything from Microsoft.

If you want to anything that involves saving data to files, connecting to anything USB, cameras, photos or videos, then RPi. You could do some of that with an Arduino, but it will all be built in or easily added to a RPi.
 
Last edited:
The great advantage of the Pi is is price, and also given that it's raison d'etre is essentially educational, there's an enormous scene out there of enthusiasts creating resources to help you through it. If you're trying to get into electronics, the Pi is near as dammit perfect...
 
elton said:
To anyone who knows nothing about electronics or programming, a Pi or an Arduino would be next to useless. You'd be marginally better of buying a pc USB I/O board such as this from Maplin http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/k8055-usb-experiment-interface-board-n67bh
It can be programmed to monitor the on-board push buttons, and flash the LEDs.
Click to expand...

Well, I won't say I know nothing, and I can learn. And it if is aimed at kids.... you trying to tell me I'm over the hill? :) (this is supposed to be a smiley face)
 
Tam Lin said:
Slight Fred drift. I think I remember hearing about raspberry pi being invented to get Kids into programming. Would it be suitable for my seven year old grandson who loves computer games and what could he do with it?
Click to expand...

The hardware is pretty irrelevant to learning programming, unless you don't have any suitable hardware at all in which case the Pi might be a possible solution. Otherwise I'd suggest putting the Scratch programming environment from MIT on whatever you have and pointing him at it. It's free, fun and well supported.
 
AngusMcDoon said:
You might be surprised at the amount of software guff that goes into top end autopilots! They use ARMs, but lesser ones than the RPi. The latest wind instruments that transmit on NMEA 2000 use ARMs as well now to have the space and processing power to handle the N2K stack.
Click to expand...

Oh, I wouldn't be surprised at all. But if someone wants to roll their own, I think an Arduino development system is a lot better place to start than a Pi.
 
tim_ber said:
I keep seeing the things advertised (for kids often), and I am getting into electronics as a hobby, but I have NO IDEA what these things are or what SIMPLE applications I could use them for.

What are they replacing, for example?

Way beyond my means or desires to make autopilots etc, just want to know roughly what they are / what I as a low level hobby person could start doing with one to learn what it does?

Make LEDs turn on or off? Make simple burglar alarms?

Any ideas? Do you see the level of ignorance I am coming from?
Click to expand...

A Raspberry Pi is a small, simple and slow computer which will just about replace a bottom end netbook.

An Arduino is a control system which will let you programme outputs to do stuff as a result of inputs.
 
AngusMcDoon said:
Arduino would be the way to go if you want to do that. You could use a RPi, but it is way overkill for that kind of thing.
Click to expand...

A friend of mine developed a system for automatically switching on something or other on HGVs. All it has to do is detect a switch being closed for 3 seconds, then keep an output high until the switch is closed for three seconds again. After a lot of consideration, he designed the system - which is on the market - using an ARM system-on-chip. Yup, an entire computer just to do that ... but at 80p for teh components it was by far the cheapest solution he could find.
 
JumbleDuck said:
It's a damn sight more expensive than a virtual machine running the Linux of your choice, though.
Click to expand...
That's why I think the Pi is a waste of time and money for the vast majority. Everyone can afford a PC, or already has one. And Pi emulators are available at zero cost. If you can't program the emulator, the Pi is completely useless.
 
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