 So, I had a question on a comment on a video the other day asking me, can a raspberry pie replace an Arduino in every way? And it's common for us, in many cases, to compare a raspberry pie to an Arduino when really they're very, very different, although they can be used for a lot of the same things. Raspberry pies are amazing devices for the price. But in many, many cases, I think an Arduino or some other type of microcontroller such as an ESP chip of some sort is a better option for a lot of, you know, internet of things type projects. So for example, let me give you three ways where an Arduino, I'll just say Arduino, but I'm talking about any type of microcontroller you might use, whether it's an Arduino clone or something else. Here are four advantages of it. Lower power, especially if you're going to be running off a battery, I haven't played with it too much, but one, they're going to use lower power in general, but you can also set them into low power mode for certain projects where you can have it run on battery for months. Number two, instant on. Now, a raspberry pie, again, is a complete computer. It's no different than a desktop computer. It may be running an ARM processor, although some desktops might, other than that, install Debian Linux. It's Debian Linux, it's the same as you're going to run on your desktop, where, so it has a boot time. It's got a boot process. You click it, you plug it in, you turn it on, and I mean, even if you optimize it, it's going to take at least a couple of seconds to turn on, but probably, you know, closer to 30 seconds to a minute, again, depending on your setup. But a microcontroller, it turns on, it starts running the code right away. There's no delay. So it's instant on. I mean, the only time there would be a delay is if you're doing something with a network and you got to wait for it to connect to the Wi-Fi, but that time would be added to a raspberry pie as well. It would turn on, it would boot, and then it would try to connect to a network where this would start trying to connect to the network right away, and usually it does it within a few seconds. So we have lower power, instant boot. Obviously, the price is better. Raspberry pies are fairly well priced, but I mean, the raspberry pie is zero, it's supposedly $5, but then I think every time I've checked on it, the shipping line is $10, so you have to $15 already, where you can get an Arduino clone or even like an ESP chip that has Wi-Fi built in for like $2. So I mean, that's a big difference if you're going to have a lot of these little devices around your house, $15 compared to $2 or $3. Some of them are even less. Yeah, you can get certain chips for like $1.50. So again, we have low power, instant on. We have lower price, and the last one is the analog IO pins. So with the raspberry pie, I have a bunch of raspberry pies. I have one running as a video server, a media server on my TV. I have one that I've been using for years as a server that I put files on, mainly I use it SSH to log in and do stuff, and I use SSH to SCP or SFTP to transfer files securely to it. And then I recently, a couple months ago, started using NexCloud, and I bought a new raspberry pie and I'm running NexCloud server on that. But I don't really use it much for like an internet of things controlling things, again because it's overkill. But as far as I know, there's no analog input pins and a bunch of output pins. I think you can get a separate device to give it that ability. So it only has digital pins to the best of my knowledge, and a lot of things you do might just be digital, but you do need analog pins to control certain things where an Arduino would have that, but the Raspberry Pi doesn't, so it falls short there. So again, a Raspberry Pi can do a lot of things the Arduino can do, and there's definitely a lot of things that a Raspberry Pi can do that an Arduino can't, so it all depends on the project, so it's really hard to compare the two. The thing is, if an Arduino or some other microcontroller can do it, it's definitely going to be a better option for those four things I listed. I mean, obviously if you need to play videos or media, you know, real computer stuff in our Raspberry Pi is going to be a better option, but most of these internet of things that we use these things for, these projects are very, very simple. 99% of them are going to be turning something on or off or detecting when something's turned on and off. And you know, someone might want to use Raspberry Pi because, oh, I don't want to learn how to program. I already know how Python or Bash or whatever, and you can do all these different languages with a Raspberry Pi. With our Arduino, you're using a C or C type programming language. I guess there's a port of Python, but really, if you're a programmer, once you've learned how to program, you kind of seem to, unless you're going really, really, really low level, you can easily switch from one programming language to another. You might have to look up the exact syntax. Do I need semicolons at the end? Do I not? Do I use curly braces for certain things? Or do I just indent? A little things like that, but you can, you should be able to look at code and for the most part, see what it's doing. And again, most of these internet of things projects are detecting on and off switches or turning things on and off. I mean, for example, a few of my projects, I got ESP8266 chips on my two water pumps and they just detect when the power comes on. They don't even detect a switch. Just when they come on, they send a signal to my server to let me know that those pumps are running. And I run that in a loop, which it has become in very useful because sometimes those pumps are running when they're not supposed to be. And it lets me know of that, you know, a lot of lights in my house. I was actually, you know, I've shown, I bought these zap outlets, which are five bucks each to control outlets. And I just had to buy one ESP8266 chip and a wireless transmitter for it. The ESP chip was two or three bucks. The wireless transmitter was 50 cents to a dollar. So they were looking at $4 worth of stuff to control these different outlets. And I can add as many of these outlets I want. And I just have to add in the code that we're sending into a URL to control them. So, I mean, that was a simple project. I have my doorbell hooked up to an ESP8266 chip, which is just detecting a button press and it sends a URL request. Again, it's like each one of these could be done with a Raspberry Pi, but like the pump one. It's like if the pump comes on by the time the pump finishes running, the Raspberry Pi might not even boot, you know, unless it's running constantly. So obviously that's a definitely a better choice, but it's also a lot cheaper. Trying to think of some other projects I've done. I don't control my AC. I think I did a video years ago. I know I did a video years ago about turning your AC on and off. And I think I used a Raspberry Pi for that. But that would definitely be something you could use an Arduino. Because your AC, your thermostat, all it all does is detect the temperature and whenever you have it set to, it basically has a little relay turns on and off the power to your unit. So all you would need in either case where they're using an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi, you would need a relay or some sort of switch and a temperature sensor. Besides that, you either go with the Raspberry Pi or Arduino or an ESP chip if you want the Wi-Fi. So again, the cost there, and you don't want, I mean, we have a lot of smart thermostats out there that are like Raspberry Pi's, you know, they're running Linux. And if you are going to get really complex into charting dates and times, you could theoretically do that with an Arduino or an ESP chip. But you would need to get storage for it then. So that might be depending on how smart. Do you just want to create a thermostat? If you're just going to create a simple thermostat that maybe you can control remotely? Yeah, you know, Arduino or an ESP chip would be a good option. But if you really want to make it smart and you want to keep all these logs and go, you could do that with an Arduino, I guess. But a Raspberry Pi might be a better option. But if I was to do that, I probably would go with the ESP chip and send all that information to a server elsewhere. Like maybe I have a Raspberry Pi running doing other things, but I can have it log those logs. Because that's a great thing about a Raspberry Pi. Again, it's a full computer. So it's good to be used, in my opinion, as a server that maybe all these ESP chips or Arduinos connect to remotely and they send the information. It processes and sends it back. And it could be in your other room. But instead of having all these Raspberry Pies around your house doing all these different things, you have one running as a server. Then you buy all these other chips that are cheaper and more efficient for this stuff. And it can send signals and then the Raspberry Pi can tell them what to do if you need that. Plus times you don't even need that. So again, there are definitely advantages on both sides. But I think most of the time if you need a server or a media center, obviously a Raspberry Pi is going to be a better option. But if you're just talking about Internet of Things where you're detecting something with a sensor or you're turning something on and off again, which is 99% of these projects, I would say some sort of microcontroller would be a better option. So yeah, there's that. I hope that helps clarify things. And I hope you enjoyed this video. If you have any questions, comment below. Film us by chris.com. That's Chris the K. Link in the description. That's my website. And as always, I hope that you have a great day.