Arduino vs Raspberry Pi

[CharlieM]

WARNING - A Newbie Question!
I’m wanting to get into some light displays and have been reading up on these two controllers / micro computers. It seems that Arduino is the simpler one. And geared more for repetitive task. Any thoughts / opinions on which one is better for displays?

[MartinMueller2003]

Raspberry PI is a full functional Computer that can control and entire show, play the music and output video. Arduino is a generic term for a development environment that encompases MANY platforms (look at FPP on the PI). You will need to be more specific about which Arduino supported platforms you are looking at.

[CharlieM]

UPDATE,
Had a friend give this explanation on the two. Arduino is more hardware & circuitry. Rasp is software & programming. Accurate? If so, any advice / opinion on either?

[MartinMueller2003]

It depends. Many of us use the PI+FPP to run our show and then a variety of controllers to drive strings of lights / props. In some cases those prop controllers are implemented using Arduino based projects. For arduino you will need to create your hardware and your software, For PI based implementations you will need to create your hardware and software. The PI is a full featured programming environment with a robust hardware environment. THe Arduino is a limited software environment with a diverse hardware environment.

[codec101]

I use both in my Halloween display. I have a couple arduinos that run single props. One is a wooden box with a photosenor. The arduino reads the sensor and then randomly fires 2 pneumatic cylinders to open and close the lid along with making the whole box jump. Like someone else said, it requires additional circuitry to read the sensor and trigger the cylinders. It's also a repetitive thing, runs for maybe 30 sec then resests and waits to be triggered again.

I use FPP and the Pi to actually run the lights. It basically acts like the director and tells the controllers what to do when. It's more of a plug and play thing.

I also have an arduino mega that I successfully wired up and ran as a Renard controller. But it was just that, a controller. It still required something (the Pi) to tell it what to do.

[1pet2_9]

I use both, mostly because I use them for more than just Christmas. Your traditional Arduino Unos, Megas, and Nanos can usually drive 5V directly, which is much better than the Pi. The Pi needs some form of help to step up the voltage/current drive, unless you just run the small 2A SSR's directly. If I use the Pi to drive the Arduino, I feed a Pi GPIO into the Arduino analog input (which means the Arduino never talks to the Pi. Only the Pi to the Arduino).