You don't always need a ton of power when working on embedded systems. A lot of small tasks can be accomplished with simple microcontrollers and a few extra chips, but sometimes a task requires a little bit more oomf from your components.
For instance, you may need a high quality display of some sort, more mathematical capabilities, or the ability to handle different types of code. Adding more power also gives you the capability to run a complete operating system like one of the Linux distributions that allows you to treat your setup more like a small computer. The Raspberry Pi 3 is the perfect little single board computer for these tougher tasks.
The Raspberry Pi 3 is an update to the Raspberry Pi Foundation line of single board computers that takes it a step further. The older versions have a stout amount of computing power but are a little trickier to set up because they lack some forms of communication. This newest version remedied the communication issue by updating the Broadcom chip that is onboard. With this update the board now features wifi and Bluetooth without a USB dongle or additional module. Along with the extra F connections you also get a 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARMv8 CPU not too dissimilar from the chips in our smart phones, and 1GB of RAM along with whatever size SD card you choose to use.
So what actually gives the Raspberry Pi 3 a significant leg up over smaller microcontroller boards? The key is the Broadcom BCM2837—a microprocessor that has some unique advantages. The actual core is an ARM Cortex-A53 which features heaps of cache and floating point units that help to speed up data manipulation, especially in advanced mathematics and graphics.
What kind of projects are open to you now that you have all this power? Beyond the normal things like blinking an LED or seeing “hello world” on a serial console you can create a lot. If you are the kind of person who has been wanting to test your skills at coding but never had a second machine with Linux loaded—now you can create a complete development environment that can be carried in your backpack. At the moment I have one setup specifically for hammering Python code and testing some mathematical packages but you could just as easily work in C, C++, NodeJS, and many others.
Another project perfectly suited to the Raspberry Pi is a media player. Instead of buying a smart TV, now you can add smarts to any old TV you have laying around the house and gain access to a huge world of media. By adding an IR receiver like the TSOP4838 from Vishay to the GPIO on the Pi you can even use a standard remote control to run things from your couch. There are pre-built distributions like Kodi that make getting up and running incredibly easy.
See related product
One of our favorite office projects was turning a Pi into a classic gaming system emulator. The Pi has so much more power than classic gaming machines that it can easily emulate their setups and play old games that bring back a lot of nostalgia. If you want to get more ambitious there are even ways to hookup classic controllers, from the old NES all the way to an Xbox 360 wireless controller. PiPLAY and RetroPie are two excellent projects that can help you get started quickly and be up and playing the classics this weekend.
Smaller microcontrollers have their strengths, but when it comes time to build, you have to have the right tools for the job. If you want to go beyond the basics and have access to a full computing environment that is capable of high definition video and much more, the Raspberry Pi is an excellent starting point.