Why a Raspberry Pi over Micro:bit
Micro Bit has been commonly known as an entry-level microcomputer. It aimed at very basic, entry-level use cases. Raspberry Pi, due to its economical price and versatile use, it is commonly used for tertiary education.
Raspberry Pi 3 vs BBC Micro Bit – Design
While the Raspberry Pi 3 resembles a rudimentary PC – a board with multiple recognisable connections – the BBC Micro Bit is essentially a 5 x 4cm circuit board with five basic I/O rings for hooking up other devices and even power.
This means that the project that a student can do is limited to five basic I/O rings while a Raspberri Pi has four USB ports, 40 GPIO pins, and an Ethernet port.
Raspberry Pi 3 vs BBC Micro Bit – Power
Raspberry Pi 3: 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU and Broadcom Videocore IV GPU, 1GB RAM
BBC Micro Bit: 32-bit ARM Cortex M0 CPU, 16KB RAM
We don’t know about the BBC Micro Bit’s specs, but we do know that it runs on an ARM Cortex MO CPU chip, which is the smallest ARM processor available. It’s designed to be extremely small and energy efficient, as well as easy to program for.
Raspberry Pi 3 vs BBC Micro Bit – Connectivity
Raspberry Pi 3: 4 x USB 2.0, 1 x HDMI, Ethernet, 3.5mm audio jack, 40 GPIO pins, Camera interface, Display interface, MicroSD card slot, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
BBC Micro Bit: 5 x I/O rings, Bluetooth Low Energy, Micro-USB controller, edge connector, compass, accelerometer
Once again, the Raspberry Pi 3, despite being very basic, actually has the recognizable connections of a modern computer.
It has an HDMI slot, four USB 2.0 slots, an ethernet port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. It also has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, something which its predecessor, the Raspberry Pi 2, missed out on. That makes it great for using as a media center.
The BBC Micro Bit has a basic set of five I/O rings, meaning you’ll need crocodile clips to physically hook it up to other devices (such as sensors or robots).
Raspberry Pi 3 vs BBC Micro Bit – Software
Raspberry Pi 3: Variety of Debian-based OSs, primarily Raspbian OS, free Windows 10 version
BBC Micro Bit: Embedded software platform, web-based interface
Raspberry Pi 3 is a full applications processor-based device that runs Linux and Windows 10, while the BBC Micro is an embedded software platform that doesn’t run a full operating system. The Pi even features a web-based UI for editing in JavaScript, Python, C++ and Blocks.
The BBC Micro Bit is suited to teach the raw building blocks of coding at the heart of it. It’s highly basic. If students were to purse into more advanced programming, a Raspberry Pi would be more suited. That is the reason why The Lab Singapore uses a Raspberry Pi so that students are able to learn a much more robust curriculum with one of the most powerful and economical microcomputer in the world today.
** The Raspberry Pi is a series of small single-board computers developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to promote teaching of basic computer science in schools and in developing countries.
** The Micro Bit (also referred to as BBC Micro Bit, stylized as micro:bit) is an open source hardware ARM-based embedded system designed by the BBC for use in computer education in the UK.
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