Laboratory Manual

Subject: - Internet of Things Lab (PECO6050L)

Class: - T Y BTech Computer Engineering Semester - VI

Experiment No: - 01

Aim: Study of Raspberry-Pi, Beagle board, Arduino and other Micro

Controller
Theory: -
Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi is a complete mini computer. It needs an operating system to work. All the
Storage is provided from a SD card. You can connect this to your network with an Ethernet Cable.

The brain of the Pi is a ARM1176JZF-S 700 MHz. It has graphics, it has a HDMI output. You
can plug in a keyboard and monitor, load up Linux, and the less technically savvy might have no
clue how tiny the machine driving everything really is. The Pi is an incredibly powerful platform
in a very small package. it’s credit card sized and perfect for embedded systems, or projects
requiring more interactivity and processing power.

Raspberry Pi is generally designed to act as a micro-computer as shown in fig 1.1.. It consists of

simple chips like RAM, CPU, USB ports or Ethernet ports and much more. It is used to create
software applications from a low-level programming language through a high-level programming
language. It also runs an Operating System. You can do various activities on your Raspberry Pi
using a connected source such as power, mouse/keyboard or a display. Raspberry Pi can become
the perfect source for learning various programming languages and also to interact with the
interfaces.

Below table shows the specifications for the Model B.

Specifications:
 Broadcom BCM2837B0, Cortex-A53 (ARMv8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.4GHz
 1GB LPDDR2 SDRAM
 2.4GHz and 5GHz IEEE 802.11.b/g/n/ac wireless LAN, Bluetooth 4.2, BLE
  Gigabit Ethernet over USB 2.0 (maximum throughput 300 Mbps)
 Extended 40-pin GPIO header
 Full-size HDMI
 4 USB 2.0 ports
 CSI camera port for connecting a Raspberry Pi camera
 DSI display port for connecting a Raspberry Pi touchscreen display
 4-pole stereo output and composite video port
 Micro SD port for loading your operating system and storing data
 5V/2.5A DC power input
 Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) support (requires separate PoE HAT)

BeagleBone Black
It’s similar to a Raspberry Pi but It’s more powerful, Based on the TI Sitara AM335x, an
application processor SoC containing an ARM Cortex-A8 core. You have more pins to control.
They recently won “2013 Top Embedded Innovator award”.

Beagleboard is an open source single board computer as shown in fig 1.2. It is perhaps the least
known platform compared to Raspberry Pi or Arduino, but its capability is worthy of consideration
to build many projects. It is a power Linux computer which can write Linux applications quickly
with the help of a kit called Mentor Embedded Linux Kit. Beagle board uses ARM Cortex-A8
CPU with 1 GHz speed, configured with 128 MB to 512 MB RAM featuring a USB port, onboard
GPU that supports OpenGL ES 3D acceleration. Also, it supports a list of an operating system
such as FreeBSD, Ubuntu, Symbian’s with active development of Android.

The BeagleBoard community is perfect for developers and hobbyists.

Specifications:
Chip TI AM3359

CPU 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8

GPU PowerVR SGX530

Memory 512 MB DDR3

Pins 2x 46 pin headers

USB 2.0 type A host port. Dedicated single mini-USB 2.0 client port (no additional 2-
USB 2.0
port hub)

Video Output microHDMI

 Audio Output microHDMI

Onboard 2 GB 8-bit embedded MMC on-board flash versionmicroSD card 3.3 V Supported (No
Storage Card Supplied)

Operating
Linux, Android, Cloud9 IDE on Node.js w/ BoneScript library, plus more
System

Dimensions 86.40 × 53.3 mm (3.402 × 2.10 in)

Price: $45

Arduino
The Arduino is simply perfect for electronics projects and prototyping. You can easy connect some
LED’s, sensors, motors into the board directly. With their user friendly board it easy to do that. To
program the Arduino you need their software. Basically with that software you can upload your
source code directly into your Arduino through USB.
After you upload the Arduino code you can unplug the USB cable attach a battery to your Arduino
Board and It will run your program forever The heart of the Arduino is ATMega3280P
microcontroller.
Arduino is the most popular microcontroller used by the technical engineers as shown in fig 1.3.
This platform is loved for a reason, as this platform provides direct hardware interaction with an
instinctive to create almost any program. This platform with the help of libraries and resources can
help you to build anything. A microcontroller generally differs from the computer board. In a
microcontroller, you set a program and control the functionality of the chip and the interfaces as
you need. To program an Arduino you will need an open source software which can be run on
your computer or laptop. You can connect your Arduino to your computer and program the
Arduino. You can connect sensors, peripherals, circuits or hardware which can directly interact
with the outside world. With the help of the program, Arduino will do anything you want it to do,
without worrying. You can use Arduino IDE to write a code and burn it directly to the Arduino
board.

The most common board is the Arduino UNO. But you can choose a wide range of options.

Specifications:

Microcontroller ATmega328

Operating Voltage 5V

Input Voltage (recommended) 7-12V

 Input Voltage (limits) 6-20V

Digital I/O Pins 14 (of which 6 provide PWM output)

Analog Input Pins 6

DC Current per I/O Pin 40 mA

DC Current for 3.3V Pin 50 mA

Flash Memory 32 KB (ATmega328) of which 0.5 KB used by bootloader

SRAM 2 KB (ATmega328)

EEPROM 1 KB (ATmega328)

Clock Speed 16 MHz

Price: 600 Rs (Approximately)

What’s The Difference?

The Arduino, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone and PCDuino may look quite similar for you, but they
are in fact very different devices.

The Arduino is a microcontroller. A microcontroller is just one tiny part of a computer. The arduino
can be programmed in C, but can’t run an operating system.

On the other hand, the Rasperry Pi and PCDuino are computers. Those devices can run an
operating system alone.

The Arduino and Raspberry Pi both were very inexpensive at the start which costs around 40$ and
the cost of the Beagleboard was thrice the cost of Arduino. Also, you can see from the table, the
clock speed of Arduino is much slower as compared to Raspberry Pi and Beagleboard which are
30 Times Faster. The RAM of Arduino is also 128000 times less compared to other platforms
which have 262144 KB RAM. As you can see the comparison between them is already coming
out and seems like Raspberry Pi has the upper edge as it is inexpensive and also a powerful
platform. But its price doesn’t seem fit to the platform because to run the Raspberry Pi You will
need to supply your own SD card, which will also cost around $3-10. Although Raspberry Pi and
Beagleboard have similar clock speeds, in the test Beagleboard ran twice as fast as compared to
Raspberry Pi. But as far as a beginner is concerned, Arduino has a performance level which will
be best suited for them. Arduino is very simple to use which can run the program at a time and it
is programmed in low-level C++. The Raspberry PI and Beagleboard both run Linux operating
system which is capable to run multiple programs simultaneously and can be programmed in
different languages.
As Raspberry Pi and Beagleboard both use flash memory (SD card for Raspberry Pi and Micro
SD card for Beagleboard), this can become an interesting feature to use. With the help of this flash
memory, you can create multiple projects on different memory cards and can use it later by
swapping it. This will give you access to multiple configurations by swapping memory card and
can continue with your project where you left off. You can use the different operating system by
using different cards to swap in.
Below is the quick comparison of these platforms which makes them valuable in their own type
of applications. A table is shown below to outline the features of these platforms.

Raspberry Pi Arduino Beagleboard

Model tested Model B R3 Rev A5
Price $35 $29.95 $89
Size 3.37” x 2.125” 2.95” x 2.10” 3.4” x 2.1”
Processor ARM11 ATMega 328 ARM-Cortex A8
Clock speed 700 MHz 16 MHz 700 MHz
RAM 256 Mb 2 Kb 256 Mb
Flash SD Card 32 Kb 4 Gb (Micro SD)
EEPROM 1 Kb
Input voltage 5v 7-12 v 5v
Min power 700 mA (3.5W) 42 mA (.3W) 170 mA (.85W)
Digital GPIO 8 14 66
Analog input N/A 6-10 bit 7-12 bit
PWM 6 8
TWI/I2C 1 2 2
SPI 1 1 1
UART 1 1 5
Python, Scratch, Squeak,
Dev IDE IDLE, Scratch, Squeak/Linux Arduino Tool
Cloud9/Linux
Ethernet 10/100 N/A 10/100
USB Master 2 USB 2.0 N/A 1 USB 2.0
Video out HDMI, Composite N/A N/A
Audio output HDMI, Analog N/A Analog
Fig 1.1 Raspberry Pi

Fig 1.2 BeagleBoard

Fig 1.3 Arduino Board