Raspberry Pi and Arduino

I have to agree with you Liz. I’m currently planning on using an RPi and Arduino together in my new home office (a glorified Shed!) as an alarm system and sound system rolled into one. Basically the RPi will host a shoutcast style server but with music coming via Spotify, the arduino will run a motion detector and if its armed and detects motion, will trigger a signal to the Pi, which stops the music server and replaces the output with an annoyingly high pitched alarm. This will also in turn send a signal to another arduino in my house, setting off the house alarm.

I couldn’t do it without both the Pi and an Arduino, they really are a match made in heaven!

The Pi is a personal computer.

Surely Arduino users use personal computers to flash their devices with the desired software they want to use it for?

No it’s not. It’s just a motherboard.

No it’s not. It’s a computer. Not a PC if you’re wed to the x86 definition, but a personal computer nonetheless.

The only significant difference from the main box of a PC is the lack of an integrated power supply.

The little pc’s don’t have those either these days! :D

Indeed!

How many laptops out there uses external PSU’s?
Almost all of them!

I couldn’t agree more.

I’m planning on using an Arduino for a UAV auto pilot in combination with a Raspberry Pi and GSM modem for real time data processing and reporting.

They’re both perfect, small, low power devices that will marry well in the future!

The Arduino software is written in Java so getting it to run on a Pi might be a bit of a problem. I know Harry Fairhead has got javaFX running on a Pi so there may be hope.

You can run Java stuff on a Pi now, but with no JIT it’s just rather slow. Hopefully that will change in the future however! Haven’t tried the Arduino IDE, but it’s quite lightweight so may be usable. As a last resort, I don’t see anything stopping someone from rewriting it in another language if the demand is there ;)

I have been programming Ardinos in a subset of C, I have not heard of a java implementation

I think they’re talking about the program in which you write the C-code ;)

Yes we are, the IDE is written in Java. Your correct, the IDE does generate C++ to run on the Arduino

Ok, I’m happy now :)

Then it must be possible to just use any other AVR IDE? or in some way use the AVR-gcc?

Thanks a lot for sharing. This is exactly what we are expecting to see. And the next step is to add Android so that the whole system can be mobile enough: http://goo.gl/YaZbb

This is exactly what I want to do, and couldn’t agree more – I can see the two platforms working together brilliantly. And quite ironically, I was just about to connect my Arduino to my Raspberry Pi and then this post appears! I had read Simon’s blog post previously and I wanted to give it a go.

Let’s hope you don’t have any foxes or cats in the neighbourhood, then!

Hmmmm… That didn’t nest – it was a reply to Rick @ no. 1

I’m all for it myself! I have a wiring library that I run on my Pi to “extend” wiring back to the Pi (or any Linux host, really) so I can run similar stuff on the Pi that I run directly on the Arduino. (Or just use the Arduino as an extended set of GPIO pins and sensors, etc).
I’ve even extended it to the extent of writing a wiring-like Library for the GPIO on the Pi itself…
Lots of fun to be had.
All my stuffs in C though, so probably not relevant to the Python heads ;-)

I’ll just add a quick reply to my own post – Gert has added space on his Gerboard for an Atmel chip – identical to those used on (e.g.) the Arduino Uno and older 2009, so there’s even more reason to embrace Arduino…

good to here there is another c programmer about, do you have a c library that talks to the IO pins?

i think “cross-flow integration” might be a better term than good synergy.

I like that. It’s significantly less horrid.

I agree synergy smacks of marketing speak to me whereas cross-flow integration sounds nice and engineeringy to my tech-head ears :o)

There is nothing wrong with “synergy” – a perfectly good word, straight out of the Greek, meaning “working together”. One of the few management-speak words with a correct classical etymology.

RasPi + Arduino joined together should be a “syzygy” ( which has lots of cool meanings related to being yoked together, though being a biologist I like the “conjunction of two organisms without loss of identity” :))

Or perhaps we can describe them as having an epiphytic relationship, you big biologist, you.

symbionts to you too.

I was deliberately avoiding that one in case you thought my understanding entirely bounded by what I’ve seen on Star Trek: DS9.

“Cross-flow integration” takes marketing new-speak to a whole new level. The phrase has a buzzword compliance quotient of 99.9% and also happens to be completely meaningless except to contrived rationalizations.

Engineers don’t speak that way, they try to use meaningful terms, and they don’t use long phrases just because they sound technical. That’s the province of marketing.

lol. yea, it was kind of a sarcastic jab at all those marketing buzzwords. i think i was channeling a little bit of jack donaghy there.

*Good* marketers don’t use buzzwords either. ;)

yes and Engineers leave the cross-flow to their petrol engines

I’m very sorry to hear that some people in the Arduino community would be down on the Raspberry Pi. Anyone who thinks about it for a while will clearly see that the two devices will be a great compliment too each other. By pairing the two, they are a perfect “soup to nuts” solution for teaching about the lowest level workings of a computer (the Arduino side), the highest level workings of a computer with modern operating systems (the Pi side) and everything in between. A very decent undergraduate level Computer Science curriculum could probably be designed around these two devices alone. Anyway, I’m certain any hold-outs in the Arduino community will come around eventually.

This is precisely the realm into which I intend to take my undergraduate teaching. I think the Arduino (which I currently use on my Embedded Systems course) and the Pi are a great match.

Glad some one else has had the idea of Arduino + Rapberry Pi rather than Arduino or ‘Pi. They are not exclusive thats why we did the Pidunino:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5c1Dfaf57g&feature=my_liked_videos&list=LLRZnmPWoopskbWEkB5IQBiw

We are currently working on porting the Arduino IDE to the RPi as well as other projects such as our Acrylic cases
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rlYz2wI7hY&feature=my_liked_videos&list=LLRZnmPWoopskbWEkB5IQBiw

I think the Arduino as a I/O board for the RPi is really the way to go as there are 1000’s of projects which require that the Arduino is connected to a PC for visualisation using Processing or whatever. These projects are potentially more portable and affordable with a Raspberry Pi than ever before

My grandchildren and I thank both (RasPi and Arduino) communities for these marvelous creations. I am retired after seeing 40+ years of development leading to this very exciting point.

See, I always thought of the Arduino as more of a core data-acquisition device. The RaspPi could handle all the CPU-intensive tasks, but the vital I/O data logging would be more of an Arduino task.

I’m also looking into combining Raspberry Pi and Arduino.

I have a couple of Arduinos already and I have a Raspberry Pi and Arduino shield that are both in the post from Farnell – so hopefully will arrive tomorrow.

I’ll be putting my progress on my blog / web site once I’ve had a chance to play with them.

Surly that’s sad. Its like comparing nuclear missile with Light Machine Gun. Wars cannot be won by N-missile, we need battle field weapons as well. At the same time, LMGs can not project the strategic superiority on N-m.
BTW Liz, symbionts were featured in ST: TNG as well. :p

Love them both! hope them get along together well :-)

the arduino is great for solid timing for sensors and data acquisition and io, it doesn’t have to wait for a kernel and all of the myriad of processes to do their thing before it gets a look in, the arduino does this well, the pi provides a means to access that data in near realtime and augment the systems available to a tinkerer much further, having data passed to it that it can post-process whilst the arduino continues to grab more data. I see no difference between plugging an arduino into a pi than I do plugging an arduino into a PC, more power to your elbow :) so many different uses for the pi, it’s just going to be a great little cheap tool to get stuff done with.

Caterpillars envy butterflies.

Hello Liz et al,
I have to agree that pairing the Raspberry Pi with the Arduino Uno will help to unleash a lot of creative ideas on how to use these two systems together. For those who may be interested I’ve included a matrix comparing the two platforms’ various attributes:
Attributes Arduino Uno Raspberry Pi
Dimensions 2.7″x2.1″ 3.4″x2.1″
Cost $27 $35
CPU Clock Speed 16 MHz 700 MHz
Clk Speed/Cost = 0.6 20.0
CPU Core ATmega328 ARM-11
GPU 0 BCM Video Core IV
Memory 32 KB 256 MB
SD Memory Card Slot 0 1
Ethernet LAN 0 10/100
USB Host 0 2-Ports
USB Client 1 0
Audio Stereo I/O 0 0/1
HDMI Audio Out 0 1
1080p Video 0 HDMI
Composite Video Out 0 1
LCD Interface 0 DSI
Camera Interface 0 CSI
Status LEDs 4 5
Reset 1 0
JTAG 0 1-CPU/1-GPU
RTC 1 0
Expansion Hdr: multiple 1-26 pin Hdr
+5V 1 1
+3v3 1 1
GND 3 1
DNCs 0 6 – pins
GPIO 14 pins 8 pins
UART 1 – 2 pin 1 – 2 pin
I2C 1 – 2 pin 1 – 2 pin
SPI 1 – 4 pin 1 – 5 pin
PWM 4 – 1 pin 0
A/D in 6 – 1 pin 0

I’m looking forward to see the types of applications the Pi-Duino Community creates.
Best regards,
Allen H.

Hey, I bought an Arduino to mess around with while I wait for Farnell & RS to notice my existence.

Hello,
use Arduino and am waiting for Raspyberry Pi in my hands.
I always thought the two are complementary.
I share your thoughts in the post

Thanks Arduino and Thanks Raspberry Pi

Does this mean war? again!!!!

Liz you said:-
We’ve been a bit sad to see some people who are very passionate about the Arduino community coming down quite hard on the Raspberry Pi project as the Big Bad,
—————————————————————————————-
Now I spend a lot of my time on the Arduino Foroum, I read most posts and I have not come across that attitude at all in any of the posts. Is it some other forum you are talking about? Go on name names, post links.

Emails and some conversations we’ve had in person – and I’m not naming names, because I understand exactly where people are coming from on this. We have members of our community here who are just as passionate about their chosen piece of hardware as people who are members of other hardware communities are.

OK thanks for clearing that up. Most of the posts I have see on the Arduino forum have been positive and a looking forward to it. Many members have one on order and understand that they are totally different beasts. The only criticism I have seen is the fact that you can’t get a proper data sheet for the chip. This means that you can’t do a proper hardware design and have to guess at things.

One of the senior Italian (“Faraday”) arduino posters is amazingly negative about the Rasberry Pi with claims like it will never be released, and if it the price is a lowball that will be bumped up to maximize profits, it’s a scam, and other bizarre claims. See here: http://translate.google.co.nz/translate?sl=it&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Farduino.cc%2Fforum%2Findex.php%2Ftopic%2C86625.0.html. It goes on or 18 pages.

Besides that the posts are generally positive.

Yeah, we know. :(

Yaya i just love both the RPi and Arduino. They both fulfill their parts in the hardware area

I never saw an Arduino starter kit at a low enough price point to take the plunge in contrast to the RPi, I must have missed something there.
I know at least one person planning to connect their RPi (when they get it) to Twine(s) http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-listen-to-your-world-talk-to-the-internet and there has to be *someone* looking at LEGO Mindstorms NXT not to mention alternatives to things like Digital Life http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/06/att-introduces-digital-life-ip-based-home-automation-and-security-system-with-247-monitoring-centers/
I have an Ultimate Real Robots Cybot waiting to carry my RPi around once I figure the WiFi. There will be no limit to what people will get these devices talking to – its a win-win through abundance rather than win-loose through scarcity.

You need a cheap Arduino board? I’d suggest the Freetronics Leostick for AUD30, includes LEDs and buzzer.

(For exchange rate comparisons, the RPi is AUD38.)

http://www.freetronics.com/products/leostick

Let me elaborate a bit on the “Grandchildren” comment I made above. Ben, who is six, helped me set up a little Arduino demo of an LCD display. When it showed “Hello, world” he was impressed. When we changed the code and it said, “Hello, Benjamin”, he yelled “Papa, that’s AWESOME!” I suspect that when he gets to play with Scratch on the Raspberry Pi, he will have a similar comment. Thanks again, everybody, for some wonderful creations.

Good idea. I always cringe when I see people that want to use the Pi for tasks that require hard, low-jitter realtime scheduling. It’s just not possible with the Pi. If the Pi performs similar to the BeagleBoard (which seems likely), you’ll see ~50us of jitter in the best case, with realtime-capable kernel and all kinds of tricks. With a dedicated MCU it’s easily possible to get down to 1us jitter.

And don’t get me started on advanced I/O like ADC conversion or PWM generation. Attaching an MCU to the Pi has many, many advantages.

For those of us slightly baffled by the conversation, can you explain what jitter is and why the RPi with 700MHz isn’t as good as an Arduino with 16MHz? What feature does the Arduino have that is needed in this case?

Thanks,
David

“Jitter” is irregularity in timing of tasks that need to run at precise intervals, like how accurately a drummer can keep time, only much, much, faster. The Arduino doesn’t run a full PC-style OS, which means it also avoids all the overheads of process scheduling, memory management etc that can impact on timing accuracy. But all that stuff makes it easier to offer a GUI that allows the user to visualize what’s going on and control it.

Thus you see the Arduino is better suited for low-level jobs, the Pi for high-level ones.

With the stock software, a Raspberry Pi is running a multiuser/multitasking operating system. Usually, an Arduino is running just one program at a time, often without interrupts.

It is impossible on any multiuser/multitasking system to do tasks with realtime constraints, such as track a mouse in a window system, record or playback audio, or play HD videos at 1080P without skipping…

Whoops. My mistake. The Raspberry Pi does that stuff already. (But, you can get it to mess up the audio, or lose mouse events, if you get enough other stuff going on at high enough priority.) Plenty of Linux systems with far less resources than the Raspberry Pi manage to do audio and video without skipping, but it took a lot of effort to make that work right. It is not impossible, just hard.

One common technique for low jitter realtime stuff, in simpler embedded Linux systems, is to do the most timing sensitive parts in the bottom half of a device driver, the less timing sensitive parts in the top half of a device driver. Then you need a bunch of infrastructure to manage the communication between your driver and userspace, plus all the initialization. Not a good first project for a 17 year old.

To further complicate things on the Raspberry Pi, some peripherals are connected to the GPU. To access those in new ways, requires new GPU code (which we lack the tools and information to write). Even the peripherals that are connected “directly” to the CPU, like the GPIO pins, are connected with packetized busses, so the timing is more complex than on an Arduino.

Because the Raspberry Pi is inexpensive, mass produced, and will be widely available, it will be a good choice for learning how to write device drivers in Linux. However, for applications, where the goal isn’t to learn how to write a device driver, most people will probably just use an Arduino, bare AVR chip, or other microcontroller for the actual real time bit twiddling, even after it becomes well documented.

Thanks to both of you. I thought that when Greg said “a real-time kernel” he meant a real-time operating system, not Linux. Am I right in assuming that the RPi would actually have even lower jitter than the Arduino, due to its faster clock, if it was either running bare-metal with no OS or with an RTOS?

That’s unlikely. The architecture of the SoC and CPU is very complex and timing is very unpredictable overall, even with a small RTOS kernel. The hardware is simply not designed for real-time.

Many atomic clock modules have a 10.000000Mhz output which could be suitably buffered and used instead of the Arduino’s crystal. Such an Arduino would be slower than ones with a 16Mhz ceramic resonator or the ones with a 16.000Mhz crystal, but the jitter would be hard too measure.

Note that instructions on the Arduino take one or two clock cycles. An interrupt during a two cycle instruction would be 100ns later. So you need a bit of code to detect that single cycle slop, and correct for it, otherwise, you’ve wasted $400 on your atomic clock. You can check the AVR data sheet to see the timing details on the I/O pins. They have a certain amount of slop. If you need more precision, you might want to add some external latches that are clocked directly off of the atomic clock.

On the other hand, software running on the Raspberry Pi bare metal, would be running about 70 instructions for every one instruction on the atomic clock controlled Arduino. The timing precision there would probably be limited by the logic between the CPU and GPIO pins. You could use external latches clocked off of an atomic clock to reduce the jitter here too.

Note that cycle counting AVR instructions is easy. The much more complex ARM instructions, makes cycle counting harder. The AVR doesn’t overlap instructions, the ARM does.

I don’t have a Raspberry Pi yet, but I’ve got my oscilloscope ready. In a couple months, I’ll be able to tell you what timing precision I can actually achieve (inside a device driver, with interrupts disabled, networking turned off, etc…).

I will probably use an Arduino for I/O for my other projects, since I like having a functional network stack.

If you need an ARM SoC _and_ an 8-bit MCU to do an 8-bit MCU’s job with the ARM SoC, you’re doing it wrong. Also, if your realtime tasks get preempted by (or fail to preempt) non-realtime tasks, you’re using your FIQs wrong. Latencies will indeed not be quite as deterministic as with the MCU, but they should be in the same ballpark, and should suffice for anything you can call “realtime”. If they don’t, or if jitter is super-critical, you should be using and FPGA / CPLD anyway, with the 8-bit MCU too. Unless you are missing the specific peripheral you need on the SoC, there’s no good reason to tack on an MCU, and using bit-banging for real-time tasks is an equally stupid thing to do on SoCs or MCUs – it got really old since the last time when someone generated PAL video or emulated USB that way just to show they can.

Liz,
You would have a nicer way to say this but I don’t: Never let the morons get you down! As you pointed out, RPi and Arduino are complementary. I would no sooner do the crunching-and-display bits on an Arduino than I would do the real-time stuff on the human interface device RPi. People who do not know the difference are best handled with benign neglect.
You are doing great as the tone-setter for the community and you have wonderful allies like Jenny Peters to help you in that. Most, actually by far MOST, of the Great Wide Open Interwebs have become an unpleasant waste of time. You are bucking the tide and I salute you for it.
Fred

The arduino and the Raspberry Pi are a great combination in my opinion. It is relatively simple to connect them via a USB cable and use serial communications. Then you can off load all the interface programming to the Pi. Also, with the Pi costing around the same price as an ethernet shield you can create a better web interface for your project, that is significantly easier to implement. It appears to be win-win to me!

For some reason i’m having flashbacks of the great “Commodore vs Sinclair” war of the eighties, can’t figure out why…

I don’t see why anyone would use an arduino anyway, just buy a separate avr and an unpopulated board, it’s so much cheaper?
The R pi has value because it’s a fully fledged computer..

So — and let me get this right — you’re actually telling us that there are people in this world who take time out of their “busy” lives to write to you and complain that your little computer is better than theirs and that you should feel guilty?

I can honestly say I’ve now heard it all.

ps. The Raspberry Pi is better than my 1977 Remington calculator so I demand a personal apology from the Foundation! How do you horrible people sleep at night?!

People forget that there is other MCU than Arduino based out there. I personally LOVE the Texas Instruments MSP430 serie of MCU… Cost 50cent for the small chip, yet provide multiple ADC, alot of IO and run at 1MHZ.

TI MSP430 value line LaunchPad cost only 4.30$ and include the developpement board, usb programmor, usb cable and 2 MCU !!!! And run at lower power than arduino mcu and at lower voltage, and yet doing programming is really easy for it, and 2 mcu included run at 16MHZ.

Now will I stop using the MSP430 for just Raspberry Pi ? No, because of : cost, size, weight, power and it simplified low level programming. I can do lot of small embedded devices with MSP430 that fit in a cube inch of space.

Now, would I stop using Arduino for Raspberry Pi ? Yes, because of : cost, size, raw power, stable powerful IP stack. I would still use the Arduino shield, but on either an MSP430 ‘converter’ or on an Raspberry Pi.

The problem with Arduino is price… it is very expensive for the type of hardware that come with the device… Also mostly what people want is to do networking so they can interface what their electronic device do to the public internet for simpler access to information… Now doing that on an MCU is far from perfect, and it is expensive. This is why the price tag and raw power of the Raspberry Pi might kill Arduino.

Now what Arduino have here is it extensive C Library system to talk to the different shield that make it easy to play with it… And if that is ported to Raspberry Pi, then Arduino is effectively dead unless price drop to under 15$ for the current 70$ model.

I personally think that Arduino C Library system is actually something really bad for electronic teaching in general… It it the same problem as using windows or an console… It doesn’t force you to learn how thing work and why it work that way, but only how to use something for a very specific and limited use.

I loved learning on how to control a small RC Servo by myself. Understanding the logic behind what is the signal that is sent, the ‘protocol’ used. This allowed me to learn why servo are so cheap, and it limitation and where it most useful. Once I have that low level basic understanding, I will be able to think and understand when a problem arise, and I’ll be able to think of a solution myself.

I’ve read datasheet from standard 2 line LCD Text display that I connected to my MSP430, and coded a library in a very low level, structured format… It basicly a copy of the datasheet in C code… And that is fine… Because using that library is basicly learning the steps it require for it to work. But when the code is maded to be wrapped is alot of different way just to make it plug & play, then you didn’t learn nothing except for the small satisfaction of having it run the demo application.

So yea Arduino will be affect by Raspberry Pi… Must mostly because Arduino are way to expensive for the basic components they have, and as soon you want to do interaction with regular computer via IP network, these devices are too slow / limited to do a good job

Hi,
doesn’t look like a fair comparison.
You compare MSP430 with full arduino board cost, while you should compare it to an atmega bare chip cost with similar RAM/FLASH etc.. and one would see that the price is the same. And the support you get from arduino/avr community is much nicer than the one from TI (at least from what I’ve seen with beaglebone)
I think Atmega + RPi will work great (see also the guys at deltaboard.org!).
In fact what RPi will probably kill, is the beagle bone from TI…

cheers,
andrea

The development board called TI MSP430 LaunchPad cost 4.30$. Check it out http://www.ti.com/LaunchPad

Also, an MSP430 asm code is smaller than ardruino, so the memory requirement is different.

The MSP430 asm code is alot more optimized than the ardruino atmega chip. It make the MSP430 faster at the same clock speed, and also require smaller memory/flash for the same execution, and require ALOT less power.

I understand the importance of learning assembly and low level stuff, but the whole point of getting people trying to get people involved in the industry is to make it fun. I can assure you that very few people write assembly for fun.

Most people just want to get stuff working, and if they can get an LED to flash in a couple of lines of code and this engages them, that’s great. If they want to dig deeper, they will!

When I said assembly, it was refering to the fact that compiled C code will have a smaller footprint (Since they all get converted to ASM whatever platform you are even if you don’t visually see it).
Code to turn a led on/off on a MSP430 in C :
P1DIR |= BIT0; // Set Port 1.0 as output GPIO
P1OUT |= BIT0; // Port 1.0 is now set high
P1OUT &= ~BIT0; // Port 1.0 is now low.
This is native code… No wrapper. You can see exactly what happen here. P1DIR and P1OUT are memory location you write directly too. It address is written in the datasheet of the chip
On Ardruino, you do this :
pinMode(1, OUTPUT);
digitalWrite(1, HIGH);
digitalWrite(1, LOW);

I could write function that do the exact same thing for the MSP430…(This is exactly what arduino did to talk to the Atmega pins, by replacing P1OUT with PORTB and P1DIR with DDRB)
The difference is 1 of them require you to actually understand a bit of programming, including bit operators… But that is a good thing and part of your computer learning experience you need ! And sadly ardruino doesn’t encourage that. And most wont see that P1OUT and P1DIR or PORTB is memory address… But by looking at the datasheet (since they might end up needing to look at it for understanding different things, like how much current you can draw from the pins… You might at the same time see it and by yourself make a link of it and at the same time learning.

It actually need to be hard for people to really improve themself. Because where we draw the difference between good engineer and lazy one, is the good engineer won’t just give up because he doesn’t know the answer… He will dig for it, and do alot of attempts and learn from failure. And he will also want to understand how something work so he can come up with a different way to make it work.

But the lazy aspect I’ve seen in 90% of people I know… Once they did it the easy way and reached the end, they don’t care to look more deeply after how does it work… The fun of the end result is already passed, and we just pass to the next thing, with the expectation that it will be easy again, and if it not, then we give up !

So this issue of Ardruino also reflect the problem Raspberry Pi I believe will have in term of reaching it goal. Giving a fully functional SD card image with easy tool to write it from a windows machine is the EXACT problem we have today.

It need to be HARD.. Yet it need to have steps, with multiple achivement along the way.. (Doesn’t that sound like all the good computer game out there ;)

I’ve seen this drag and drop app for doing programming games… I really think this is also part of the enginere problem today !

I can’t remember how young, I was when I started programming on the TRS-80 my dad had… I did a small program that simulated the program used at the Video store to print rental on a dot matrix printer… It wasn’t complicated, just a few command action I needed to learn : print, input, for, if… I used a tape audio to save my program (I also had floppy disk, but tape cassete were cheaper).

Now I’m 30… Maybe I’m old school, but I feel this low tech allowed to grasp alot of it. But what of today.. Dot Matrix is basicly gone… Interface is all USB that does alot of different things in the background.. Drivers are required for everything since you don’t really talk to the hardware anymore, everything need to be ‘converted’ to the private printer language….

As I type this, I keep hoping I think of a miracle solution(that mostly my process, think of the bad thing until an solution to them popup), but none come up… I feel the problem is already too late… We skip generation where dad/mom don’t deal with those low level tech anymore, and then wont pass it over to children. Now the last solution is in school… But what will they do… They will use really easy tool to teach, since most techy wont remain on high school salary, so it will be a secondary teaching skill for a teacher, so it will need to be stuff like Arduino… You just copy paste and it work. But still havent resolved the problem…. So again, were screwed ;o)

And teaching C to a kid isn’t hard… I learn it by myself from a book I read in religion class when I was 11, and I didn’t speak a word of english, so I had no idea what if/for/else/… mean. Yet the book were in french, so I understood the leason and know what it was for. I wish I had a C class when I was in high-school… But all we had was ‘Logo Writer’ !

The hard part is to teach C to a Math high-school teacher to a level he can teach others.

Sorry for my long post.

One of the most common questions I get when I tell people about Raspberry Pi is “What about Arduino?” It’s is as if I am telling people how I make pizza and they ask, “What about ice cream?” I also know how to make ice cream, but talking about the two is not quite the same subject. That doesn’t stop me serving both at the same party. (And raspberries go pretty well with ice cream but that’s another whole subject.)

Hello, I think that if someone plans to create a movie player
on TV with Arduino is mad. Also if one plans to create a 4 buttons IR remote control
for TV using Raspberry Pi, is mad. It’s like a truck and a spider car ; both of them have wheels, motor and seats, both of them run on the streets, but have differeent (very different) purposes. They are not comparable, simply.

P.S. the copy and paste password system has some problem…

I have never seen a post i can agree with more than the one Marc O. Chouinard did.
It might be easy to do simple things with arduino, but almost impossible to do what you really want. Arduino projects is all about adjusting what you really wanted to do, that the avr chip has no problem doing, to the limited capabilities of the arduino. It promotes laziness and removes technical understanding, most arduino users probably don’t even know what a microcontroller is, they just have an arduino. It is very similar to answering the question “what processor does your computer have? ” with “windows”

Personally I hope the Raspi can tune down the arduino hype a bit in favor of for example a 2 usd avr chip on a breadboard with 3 times the capabilities of a arduino.

Andrea: the comparison is fair, and what is up with the header spacing on the arduino to prevent protoboards be used as shields?

Arduino gets too much stick for dumbing down embedded systems. I work in the embedded systems industry and constantly hear colleges complaining about it, but you have to remember that if it wasn’t for Arduino, lots of people would never have given it a go. Some of those people will never know what a microcontroller is, but some of them will go on to read into the subject and maybe even take up training and/or careers in the industry. That can only ever be a good thing.

And it will be an even better thing when the only real language or development environment for embedded systems, Forth, comes in as well

This is very funny. There are two really different boards and some people just mix them because their size.

In fact I’ll think about using the Arduino to get more GPIO’s for the Raspberry Pi. In that case there will be a good symbiosis between these boards.

You can use 74HC595 and 74HC597 to expand the number of GPIO to as much as you want really.

Hi Liz! First of all thank you (and the rest of the team) for your work!
I recently ordered a Raspberry PI (mid-March) and while waiting I started asking myself what should I do with it.
Guess what? I bought an Arduino board and with a couple friends of mine we started a project of a small robot.
Arduino drives the motors while the PI will (when it arrive) manage internet connection, image processing and heavy computation in general.
I really think ArduPI (that’s what I’m calling the duo since Raspduino seems very ugly at least for an Italian) can really change the world of DIY robotics as a low cost, reliable and powerful solution.
We already have something working but we must use a laptop as a Raspberry PI, I hope to put a video online as soon as I receive the PI.
Thank you again for your work!

I’m thinking along those same lines. Arduino for sensory input (nervous system) and the RasPi for higher processing (brain)

I agree here as well, I am currently using an arduino mega to run a small apartment brewery (valves, motors, elements and a small LCD GUI interface) but want to upgrade to the capability and graphics of a Pi based system. I would love to add a Pi to control the arduino so I can have the best of both worlds.

I look forward my Rapberry PI board for starting my experiment to exploit Raspberry PI’s computation capability with Arduino board for developing full pattern recognition system/robot. I developed micro system using very low performance router board with LInux OpenWrt and Arduino board computer vision application robot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCgs8v-accg
Raspberry Pi should make it faster (i hope!).
How long does it take for delivery?

Sorry to hear that some of the short-sighted ones have been giving you a hard time.

As you say, the Arduino and Pi are different beasts. The Arduino has the protected I/O and extremely low power abilities. The Pi has the processing grunt and offline storage.

There are quite a few of us over in the JeeLabs camp who can’t wait to get a Pi working with the ATmega based JeeNode. The SPI interface looking especially interesting in an RFM12B interface kind of way :-)

I have to add my 2c….

If the Arduino fanbois are getting their y fronts in a twist over the Pi, then they first need to grow up, and second well, eerr… grow up some more !!

I am sure there are things that can be done on both platforms equally well, but the bulk of the stuff you would use a Pi for is just not applicable to a Arduino. As liz said, one is a application processor the other is micro controller !

I think the big issue is price point, people planing a new project is more likely base it around a Pi than a arduino at the point of concept, but It may well be more practical to use a Arduino in the long run.

I know which one I’d rather have! All the projects I’m thinking of involve an internet connection, and some serious grunt. On anything < ARM, talking to the internet is a PITA. Even on an ARM Cortex M3 it was soul destroying. For some of the stuff I have planed, many people would see the Pi as overkill, but when you're not making a commercial product (ie, you just want to mess about and see what you can code in your spare time), you really want dev time to be easy. I've worked on commercial projects where you're having to get every last cycle out of an underpowered microcontroller, but I don't find that a fun way to spend me evenings!

It’s because of the Raspberry Pi that i’m now playing with Arduino. I’ve always been a PicChip fan myself but Arduino offers some darn handy hardware interfacing. The media center i plan on building with my Pi will have 1 if not 2 arduino’s in there as well to handle the LCD’s, IR remote, front panel..etc the Gertboard will more than likely handle room automation (lights, curtains etc).
Arduino and RasPi compliment each other rather than subtract ;)

The other advantage Arduino has its you can actually buy arduino :-)

Well, I’m pretty sure you can buy a Raspi, so what’s your point?

Well, if you pronounce the word “actually” loudly, you will understand his sarcastic tone.

Thanks Pete … glad someone got it :-)

Sarcasm doesn’t across well in unemphasised text…!

Have you tried …. i’m still on the waiting list :-)

I plan to use a RPi in conjunction with an Arduino for a remote control car – I’d use a wifi shield but this is cheaper and has a bit more grunt should I want to go further with its functionality – say, driving the car through a mesh wireless network…

That is just crazy! They both live in a totally different space and will be very complimentary to one another. I can’t wait to get my RPi so I can start projects connecting them.

The biggest difference between an Arduino and a Raspbery Pi? You can order an Arduino and actually get it delivered.

Technically Raspberry Pi and Ardruino live in different space. But the problem is people try to do way too much with Ardruino for stuff that it wasn’t made for… Basicly everything networking/storage related that require alot of code.

MCU are great for the low power / low cost / small footprint. But Ardruino is not any of that now. So everything that is storage/networking, Raspberry Pi will eat it out.

BUT, what I see stuff with MCU are good for is remote sensors that talk wirelessly (not over Wifi) to a central system (Raspberry Pi). Or have a offline low power capture system that do stuff while an Raspberry Pi is shutdown, or decide when to powerup the raspberry pi. Or an standalone Motor controller, so Raspberry Pi send command to it to do stuff, but it can either go in standalone basic sensor more, or have an failsafe action when the Raspberry Pi crash… (Like in Nitro RC Car, when you loose wireless comm, you want the trottle to shutdown ! ), an LCD controller.

This is what MCU are great for ! Small specific application that have code robustness (by being small), have small footprint, low power, low heat emission…

First of all I think that the Arduino will not overlap in it’s applications with the Raspberry Pi, each one of those have different applications and can coexist. The arduino platform makes easier for the newbies to start working with MCUs due to the great deal of support it has.

I know that comparisons will make fanatics show up from time to time, like Mr. Chouinard who has made really unfair comparisons with his obvious passionate attachment to the TI MCUs.
First of all you cannot compare the MSP430G2211IPN14 (Which comes with the value line Launchpad of TI) with the Arduino, the G211 from TI is almost useless (Even if you have 2 of them) when you do not have ADC, PWM and specialized registers to make code efficient I2C and SPI applications like the ATMEGA328 has. I have programmed with assembly code (And C for that matter) for the AVR family of Atmel and I really find useful the versatility that you have with the IO ports configuration; what you consider a non efficient solution, is a strength for other applications.
Then in your last post you talk about the large footprint of the arduino, and you are not considering small footprint options that you have, and can find if you look at the arduino web site.

If you are going to talk about MCU solutions you should also include all the Microchip family, the complete Atmel AVR family and other MCU manufacturers for that matter, but not disqualify the arduino with a biased point of view. A very similar solution that you are pointing with the TI MCUs can be achieved with MCUs from other manufacturers like Atmel or Microchip.

Talking about the Arduino, you can get an Arduino UNO board from 16-30 USDlls depending on where you buy it, or buy the MCUs and make the application yourself with a relative cheaper price for the components at least, but when you add the components required to equate capabilities is almost certain that the solution will easily reach the Arduino Uno price. In general I agree with the applications and advantages that you pointed out about MCUs and computer solutions, but not with the comparison that you made between Arduino and the MCU solutions that you prefer, I think they are biased and/or out of context.

I’ve been struggling trying to educate technicians on the use and programming of MCUs myself for some time, and I have been only successful with the arduino in catching their real attention. I agree that for engineers is preferable to learn the deep and basic functionality of MCUs but for technicians, people not technically trained or kids it is a fair tool that helps to introduce the MCU world to them.

I am really exited with the Raspberry Pi (I am waiting mine also) because it will even make possible a deeper understanding of the computers for the new generations.

@Jose Luis

First, LaunchPad does now come with the MSP430IN2553, and it does include 10bits ADC(it specs are alot better than the atmega one), SPI, I2C… As for PWM, there tons of ways to do this, even on the very low one. Even the previous version of the launchpad didn’t came with the 2211 as primary MCU.

This is primary why I talked about the MSP430 primary, it because I talked about something I know and I could use as a comparison point better than I could with other MCU. I used the TI MSP430 as an guide since it what I like to use these days. It the option that cost the less in my view (4.30$) to get started playing with MCU and allow a lot of options, multiple free and open source compiler, and nice community. It also allow you to grew on the Non-Value line for bigger commercial application using the same code base and chip framework.

MSP430 is what that got me back to program on MCU again…

I’ve played with Microchip a while ago, but I didn’t had as much fun as I do now with TI MSP430. I’m not sure if it still like that, but some pin had it output inverted, so 1 would be low, and 0 would be high(found it really annoying back then)… There is a lot of different MCU for different application (and most are application specific).

Different Atmega chip have it force and it draw back. For example, I personally like MSP430 for since it operating voltage is between 1.8Volt(at 6MHZ) and 3.6Volt. This allow me to power it from 2x AA battery ! I can also power it from a small 2V solar cell. It have alot of low power mode that make it great for being run on battery power, faster recovery time from low power mode, and have internal 16mhz clock. It also an 16bit MCU compare to the Atmega that are 8bit(This allow reduice instruction call to do the same task. That mean it also simpler to program). The drawback I had so far compare to an ardruino setup is you can’t connect 5V input/output directly to it, and a lot of components are still 5V. Ardruno output pin can draw more current than the MSP430, so I need to setup a small transistor/driver (Though it doesn’t bother me much since I almost always use an 74HC595 that give me the bit more output power). Though, on the MSP430IN2553 you have 16 GPIO available, so it not too bad.

So there is different MCU for different application. I personally like MCU for it low cost, small footprint application and low level control, so Ardruino is out of luck with me.

As for the size comment, they are comparable to an MSP430, except depending the project, they both could need less part than the other. But my size problem is mostly because of the Shields (though not required). All my project endup standalone chip with my own PCB with a 3d printed case(Ardruino powered yes… But will get replaced with an Raspberry Pi). And people learning to plug a shield and download an library is really counter productive to the learning process.

So my ‘bias’ on MSP430 is only based mostly on price, but also on it versability. Running a project off an 3V litium cell is great, also depending how it was coded/application, it can last for year off that. Also low components count is a must. MSP430 just require 3 wire, a battery for it to work (though I would think all MCU today does this). Also must have open source and free compiler available.

My big issue with Arduino is not the hardware in itself regarding education, It the software… It the framework that was put in front to make thing ‘easy’. To hide what actually happening behind the doors. Like I said in previous post, original C code to talk to the GPIO are alot similar between Atmega and MSP430, but Arduino just remove the learning process of the computer technology and how thing really work. And as long as you use the framework, your limited to learn the limit of that framework… Not the limit of the chip. And even if you expose all the posibility of the chip in the framework, you still lose something by understanding why it was coded this way. Some time it really smart MCU design concept… Sometime it really annoying… But you will learn something either way.

But I’ll say it again. I think alot of people tried to do way too much with an MCU. Though I don’t blame them because of cost and size it could be compared to a regular computer… Especially the programming ease it provided. But with Raspberry Pi in the mix, it remove all those reason to use an Arduino board. The only thing left useful is the Shields, and we will probably see an adaptor to the Raspberry Pi soon.

Now also, since you have full power of a computer, I think Raspberry Pi will gain alot of user, since you can use easy programming language like Python… So unless Arduino move to an ARM processor running linux at equivalent price point… A lot of the Arduino community will shift.

And maybe spawn a new air of low cost ARM solution that run small linux distro. You can already buy small appliance goes for 30$ that run linux with ethernet, switch, and wireless connection(alot of Router).

It’s good to hear your reasons but I must be missing something since the official TI site is showing a different information than the one you stated.

See
http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/MSP430_LaunchPad_%28MSP-EXP430G2%29

and

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/MSP430_LaunchPad_%28MSP-EXP430G2%29#What.27s_Included_in_the_Box.3F

But let’s leave like that.
About the learning process you first have to catch the attention of the people to use the tool and from there they can start increasing a deeper knowledge in the digital world. I started with the Commodore 128 (A long time ago as you can see) and I did not know any of the deep functionality of the computer but from the limited functionality that I had from that computer (You had 1MHz processor, 128 KB of RAM and the IO port was of only 4 bits) I got interested in the processor functionality and the deep workings of that computer. Fortunately the Raspberry Pi aims for a similar goal than the one achieved back then. When I first saw the Arduino I had the same impression that you have, since I was directly making my boards and programming different MCU families, it looked to me that was too expensive and outdated, but I changed my mind when I was able to catch the attention with it to people in which I was not successful, the main issue was the software. I even had to start sometimes with Ardublock or Minibloq, I had to ease the learning experience to that level. Once you have their attention it is easier to continue with the basic functionality of the MCUs.

There is one thing though, I think, won’t be substituted by the Raspberry Pi, it is much easier to make a reliable application with an MCU than with a computer.

I know that once you are “hooked” with a brand it is hard to look to other manufacturer’s solutions but it is good to look around from time to time. To sum that up, if you look at atmel’s current solutions you have MCUs of 8, 16 and 32 bits and the IDE will let you develop programs for all their families including ARM processors!
Arduino is working on a 32 bit MCU solution but it seems that was reviewed since the launch of the Raspberry Pi.
We’ll see the impact of the Raspberry Pi to the Arduino world in the next couple of years but in any case I think this is a really exciting time and I am glad that we have more options to choose from for the automation world.

As you can see in the page, they included the 2231 as the primary MCU, and it also include an ADC I2C SPI… I did say that they didn’t include the the 2211 as the PRIMARY MCU. Though that was their old kit. They are shipping it with the 2553 chip (can’t remember the secondary chip, and might have changed again since my last order). Though, they have not updated their wiki or home page regarding it.

Raspberry Pi does try to achieve similar goal than old school computer (In my case TRS-80 and Vic20). Yet, I’m a bit unsure at giving a regular full fledge computer with normal linux distro ! What make it different than using a Boot CD OS…

For your reference to other brand again… It all end up to a question of price for me. If price is no object, I would take a SoC x86 chip, and print my own board to a local shop and just code C and compile directly on it… Or use those small 100$ computer : http://www.ewayco.com/100-low-cost-pc-system-low-price-systems-pc-server/0-tq-low-cost-pc-system-low-price-pc.html

So if you or anyone else have an other solution than TI MSP430 for the price ~5$, I’m all for try it out. I’m really for trying new and different thing… But, if it not feel like a waste of time and money from the start.

I wasn’t schooled to use TI MSP430… I just saw someone in my IRC channel about an open source pbx project freeswitch post a link… 5$ Cool, will order it just for fun, and I did, gave it a try and it worked pretty darn well… So it not like I’m bias because I use it for commercial product, or I got schooled to use it… It just happen it was cheap enough for me to just order it without caring if it actually worth it and it ended up being useful. If it were for it, I wouldn’t be doing electronic again today.

Raspberry Pi at 35$ is really interesting too, it give a little bit of MCU capability, and a lot of networking power. So we will see where all things goes.

Why oh why community of Arduino that you had to see this as a bad thing.
I’m not an expert but even I know that Pi and Arduino are two entirely different works of marvel for entirely different applications.
Rather than make petty squabbles, let us- the open source community, unite and bless humanity with innovations from the marriage of this two technologies.

Arduino & Rasp interfacing is exactly what I was looking for. I’m currently developing garden watering system controlled by Arduino and Rasp will act as communication center as through web server I plan to control Arduino. Rasp has more than enough power for this, and it costs similar to Arudino ethernet shield only. Not to mention eventually WiFi add-on.

So, I think for many projects Arduino & Rasp will be perfect match working together.
I’m looking to see similar interfacing between TI MSP430 and Rasp, too. MSP430 is really another great platform, especially for power conscious applications.

“people who are very passionate about the Arduino community coming down quite hard on the Raspberry Pi” i am shocked to here that, i for one welcome both, i am awating my pi, to arive (malaysia/singapore) but limited to one per customer :( with the two combo and a little tinkering with all the shileds out there limitless FUN!

Dear Liz,

It most definitive has ;),

Best Regards,
SilverOne

I’m with Liz on this – the two boards (RasPi and Arduino) serve different purposes and I for one am looking forward to getting them working together. What’s more, they are both open source projects and surely we can all get along without resorting to Mac vs PC, Android vs iOS or Canon vs Nikon type fanboy wars?

As soon as my Pi arrived I started looking for ways to make it work directly with an Arduino Uno v.3.

Actually the Aruduino sales will increase…the Pi and Arduino work great together. Arduino may lose some internet shield sales as the Pi just kicks butt on the Arduino rather cumbersome setup…but putting the two together for their strengths is a winner…both do more together than either could individually–good marriage!

I just ordered my first Arduino shortly after receiving my Pi…looking forward to using them separately and together. :-)

I bought an arduino and that is what led me to purchase a pi

I did it the same way

It makes me sad to see such statements. I am quite an Arduino-user myself, and I have never thought of it that way. What I have, on the other hand, is spending countless hours on planning my Home Automation project, where these marvellous products will be used together!

In my experience people who write pages and pages criticising a given platform in favour of their own preference have often missed the point of the platform they are are criticising. I am sure that this is true of the long winded criticisms made of the Pi by some Arduino fans and equally of the same long winded criticisms made of the Arduino platform by various others. Moreover these same people often fail to appreciate the level of investment that would be required by others to reach the level of expertise they have achieved in the platform that they are championing.

If you are a student, an artist, an experimenter or even an experienced professional engineer wanting to (Quickly and Easily) test an “idea” by banging a few 1’s & 0’s or doing a little analogue input or analogue output (via PWM) the Arduino (both the hardware and in particular the IDE) is a great platform for doing this. If additional precision/speed is required one can invoke ‘In-Line Assembly’ or alternatively program the MCU directly (via a more traditional toolchain).

Alternatively if you want to do higher level tasks such as complex video, storage, communicating with the outside world and so forth (in a small package with a decent OS) then it looks to me like the Pi will supply the required power very nicely.

And of course there are plenty of other platforms in-between to explore . . . (UBW, Maximite etc)

Good marketing never loses sight of the “Target Audience” and a ‘good’ engineer never loses sight of the “KISS” principle (my version being; Keep It SHORT & Simple). In my view hiding complexity is not “laziness”, when done properly it can only be described as “elegance”.

The simple testament to the fact that the ‘Arduino/Processing/Wiring/Design By Numbers’ evolution got this right is the popularity of the platform and that so many have either cloned it or interfaced to it (note to Chris – check out the Digilent clone of the IDE for PIC32)

My experience of the Arduino platform is that it is ‘elegant’ and my first impression of the Pi is also one of ‘elegance’ though i must admit to being a bit leery of the lack of info with respect to the main gate array. Having said that I wish it luck and hope that I can explore it (and the Synergies :-) sometime soon . . .

For those who insist on staying lost in ‘makefiles’ & ‘datasheets’ specific to a given platform that’s fine; I can drill down to that when I need to, but I’d really rather avoid all that tedium and investment in time when all I want to do is explore an ‘idea’ or check out the latest new peripheral . . .

Nuff said . . .

Ross Filippi
Sydney, Australia

Oops – That came out a bit “long winded” too . . . sorry :-(

Ross Filippi
Sydney, Australia

P.S. Having said all the above the TI MCU does look nice :-)

Awesome Liz! We agree! We have designed a companion board for the rPi we call Alamode. We’ve already ordered a small production run.

Keep up the great work!

links:
http://wyolum.com/?p=941

http://baldwisdom.com/introducing-raspbery-pi-a-la-mode/

I’ve been doing something similar for a UAV, and decided to do a little video and write-up on how I went about doing it (using the very low-cost I2C method) to talk between the two devices. (For a UAV Project)

Video – http://youtu.be/JQgLL1hfpzY

Blog Post – http://www.danielwilson.me/blog/raspberry-pi-and-i2c-connection/

Hope this is of use to someone wanting a low cost approach to bridging the two devices

I only currently own an arduino, im working on creating some sort of voice controlled interactive space for my room and I can see where the raspberry pi would come in handy and work well with the Arduino. Maybe if the two of you could like make a raspberry piduino that would be cool :)

I just wanted to add that I ordered my first (3) Raspberry Pi about 9-10 months ago. Only after experimenting with RPi, for a few months, did I find out about Arduino. I purchased one to start, and expect I’ll be buying more of both in the near future.

In my case, Raspberry Pi has helped increase business for Arduino.

hello,
i’d love to see how you did this: connecting the RPI and Arduino trough USB i didn’t found any tutorials on it

Luke

I guess that most of you have information about this project calle “Arduberry”
Just in case someone is looking for an easy connection between both RPI and Arduino I add their link.
Arduberry project

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