FAQ

Q. Whats a micro:bit ?

A. It looks like this;

The Microbit circuit board includes

  • A 5×5 red LED matrix
  • 2 buttons (and another reset button on the back)
  • A compass and accelerometer
  • An edge connector with 22 pins (16 of which are usable GPIO pins)
  • Micro USB port for programming/power
  • 2 pin JST port for powering from 3V battery (x2 AAA batteries for example)

for more details, see here.

Q. Whats the difference between the Microbit vs Raspberry Pi

The simple answer is they are completely different kettles of fish!

Here is why:

The Raspberry Pi is a full computer that you can plug a keyboard, mouse and screen into. The Microbit is not, it needs another computer to program it. Interestingly you can use a Raspberry Pi to program a Microbit!

  • The Microbit has an acceleromenter and compress built in, along with 2 buttons and a 5×5 LED matrix. The Raspberry Pi does not include anything like that out of the box, you have to purchase an addon board (HAT) or other modules and plug them in.
  • The Raspberry Pi can be programmed in many many more programming languages and platforms, hundreds even given it runs Linux. The Microbit can only be programmed in 4 or 5 languages.
  • The Microbit is very low power, using less than a 5th of the power of the Raspberry Pi.
  • The Microbit has GPIO pins like the Raspberry Pi, but only has 9 usable free ones, vs the Raspberry Pis 26 free GPIO pins.
  • Both support expansion interfaces like SPI and I2C, but the Raspberry Pi has libraries for many addon boards already, where as the Microbit doesn’t just yet.
  • The Raspberry Pi is much more powerful, the processor is 50-60 times as powerful and has 64,000 times as much RAM(16kb vs 1024mb)!

So the main difference is the Raspberry Pi is a full blown Linux computer, where as the Microbit has a simple little microprocessor which runs a single program and that is it. They can’t really be properly compared, but can be used alongside each other. The Microbit is a great starting point after which, a Raspberry Pi makes perfect sense to progress to.