Hi, would a raspberry pi or a micro:bit starter kit be more appropriate for a 9yo? Kiddo has some Scratch experience, very little hardware experience (beyond circuits), mother used to programme in Basic (!) and C++, reasonably technical and handy. Any advice super appreciated - I have focused on raspberry pi and Micro:bit , but if there is something different and more appropriate, I can look at that too.
Thanks in advance
Keep in mind that a MicroBit is a Microcontroller, and the Pi is basically a PC.
These are two different things, and how you use them program them is different.
The MicroBit runs machine code while the Pi runs a full Linux OS.
I’m leaning towards a Raspberry Pi being a better and easier experience.
thank you so much which kit would you recommend
That kind of depends on what you have on hand now. If you don’t have a spare keyboard mouse etc then maybe this,
Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer Kit – Pimoroni
Or this, I linked to the 2gig version but there are 4 gig and 8 gig versions. I’d get at least the 4gig. And select you local etc. I’m in Canada so I got the US version.
Raspberry Pi 4 Desktop Kit – Pimoroni
I have a Pi400 and a couple of Pi 4’s. The Pi 4’s are more hat friendly IMHO. Hats will work just fine on a Pi400, but the orientation is a bit awkward.
You can fix that with this though.
Flat HAT Hacker – Pimoroni
If you don’t buy the kit, I would at least get the official power supply and the matching official HDMI cable.
If it’s within your budget I’d definitely recommend a Pi. The Pi 4 has the camera and DSI display interfaces, whereas the Pi 400 does not - a camera is great fun and a good option for next gift time. In addition to alphanumeric’s advice, if you don’t get a kit, you’ll need a micro SD card.
The micro:bit v2 is cheaper, but more dependent on other stuff like a PC for development. We’ve not used it as much as the Pi.
I have two of the original Micro-Bits. I did play around with them for a while at first. Not so much now though.
@isb Good point, forgot about the Pi400 not having the camera or display ports. I have half a dozen or so camera setups with Pi’s running Motion Eye OS. Two of them are pan tilt setups. 3A+'s mostly, a 3B+, and a 4B with the new HQ camera.
Something that could be a lot of fun and a good learning experience is the Sense Hat. It’s loaded with sensors and has an 8 x 8 RGB LED matrix. And the Pi foundation did a great job with the python code. I found it really easy to get it doing cool stuff. IMHO it’s a great value versus what’s on it.