Green, black or blue – which board is best for you?

So many programming platforms and single board PCs have appeared recently that for the beginner it can be hard to know which to choose. The Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone and Arduino are the three most popular boards on the market, supported by ever-expanding open-source communities and hardware add-ons, but which one is right for you? Whether you want to use your board to prototype or design a project, to play games or run programs, you will want to know how they match up against each other. 

Raspberry Pi Model B 

 

Launched in February 2012, the Raspberry Pi was marketed as an educational tool, designed to introduce children to coding and computer circuits. But programmers, makers, hackers and hobbyists grasped the huge potential of the Pi and snapped it up in their thousands. What distinguishes the Pi from the Arduino is the fact that it is a computer – plug it in to a monitor, use the two USB ports for a keyboard and mouse and you can run desktop applications, connect to the web and play HD video. It has a much more powerful processor than the Arduino and 512MB of RAM. The Pi can be programmed via a number of languages such as Python and Scratch. 

Recommended for - Teaching, home computing, more advanced programming

BeagleBone Black

Like the Pi, the BeagleBone Black is a development board with Ethernet connectivity, a fast (actually faster) processor and Linux compatibility. There is only one USB port, however, which might be frustrating to some users. But with its 92 digital input and output pins that can clip into numerous shields and expansion boards, the BeagleBone Black provides excellent interfacing potential – so it scores highly as a prototyping tool. If your next hardware project calls for a device to perform sophisticated functions and interact with its environment, as well as connect easily to a network, the BeagleBone Black could be the one to back. 

Recommended for - Prototyping, project design, home computing

Arduino Uno 

Sitting comfortably in the palm of the hand, the Arduino Uno (‘Blue’) is the smallest of the three boards. As a microcontroller – rather than a computer – it does not require the power of the Pi or BeagleBone. If you are an electronics novice the Arduino is your ideal launch pad. Once your application has loaded you can just plug the Arduino in to your PC via USB; no need to reboot, plug in a keyboard or choose an application to run. The bespoke programming language is easy to follow and the Arduino can be connected up to an almost infinite number of input, outputs and controllers such as smartphones. Arduino can also work with a wider range of input voltages. It does the job it has been programmed to do, and does it immediately.

 

Recommended for - Prototyping, project design, battery-powered applications

  
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