Arduino vs. Raspberry Pi

That's an extremely hard choice to make so I just chose randomly. LOL

Here's the answer I gave to a similar questions last year:

Your question poll brings to mind a favorite scene in Alice in Wonderland:

"Cheshire Puss," [Alice] began, rather timidly... "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

 

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

 

"I don't much care where--" said Alice.

 

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

The same is true with development boards.  Arduino, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, ST Discovery, PSoC 4 Pioneer and others all have things they do better than the rest, so it depends on what you want to explore.

One thing I would strongly recommend to anyone considering any community-supported development board is to first spend some time at the forums available for that board.  See how people are using the board and what best matches your interests.  See how active the forum is, and whether people are getting helpful responses to problems or are being told to RTFM (without providing link to said manual), or worse, "Google it" as if a newbie can tell which few of the 1000 Google results are actually useful.  If you have questions, these are the people who are going to help you -- or not.  Find out if people are having issues with the board and whether you want to face those same issues.  Also, check out the wiki for the board.  It will tell you if people are interested enough in the board to build up a good wiki and are therefore more likely to be interested in helping you when you get in trouble.

Well that's a majority then, I initially went with Arduino  (Had not finished the morning coffee ) but then realized the exact same as your all saying. Both boards and a mi-rad of others are good for select purposes, and in fact can and do get used together. In my own example I have used a PI as a master controller (Loads of thinking power, don't care about fast or accurate timing and it has the capability for security, networking and display all in the box) but then used Arduino or TI Launch pads for the various controllers around the installation where i want low power, reliable timing (Predictable) and can be built really cheaply (Relative to using PI components for example. Boards can be designed and manufactured for just a few dollars these days)

but I would never use a PI to control a string of WS2812B LED's as it will never get the timing reliable or even working at all.

So as said, both equally good , it just depends on the usage

I'm with Mark and John on this, to be honest it's a pointless poll except you now have a few extra points for asking it

Different devices for different jobs plain and simple. Want price and simplicity go Arduino want processing and Internet connectivity then go RPI. This poll has been effectively asked several times before. Please change it to  include  a scenario such as your application so that members can offer a sensible opinion...Ta

I have lots of Arduino's and a few RPi.

As john indicated it depends what you want to do with it.

I would also add the Arduino boot time is almost instant, doesn't care if you pull the power and is generally cheaper.

However if you want Ethernet, camera or a GUI then the RPi becomes much more useful than an Arduino (out of the box).

My vote is both, but since that isn't available, I'll abstain.

Mark

It depends entirely on what you want to do.  For low-level embedded hardware where you want to play with digital and analog interfaces, Arduino is really nice and easy from what I've seen though I haven't tried it personally.  It also has an outstanding community for that sort of thing.

If you want a "GNU/Linux box" on a credit-card sized computer (except that it doesn't have rounded corners so it doesn't fit in an Altoids box), RasPi is a great board.  However, expect to be your own GNU/Linux administrator.  Talking to devices means dealing with device drivers and permissions and those sorts of fun things you get with a mainframe operating system.  RasPi also has a very powerful media processor.  RasPi has a very strong community.