I have been having a lot of fun with the Raspberry Pi computers and Amazon was running a screaming deal on some Arduino boards so picked up four of them. The Pi is an actual computer running Linux (although it can run older versions of Windows just fine - 95 and 98. Only one Gig of system memory). You program it in a high-level language (C) or any of the scripting languages (Lua or Python).
The Arduino is a microcontroller - it does not use an operating system and you must use its own high-level language to create your programs. The advantage is that there are tons of pre-built applications that you can swipe and edit to fit your own needs. Lots of libraries for controlling lights, input (both on/off and variable), motors, sensors, etc...
Fun stuff to do now that I can't go and play outside. We are now at two tenths of an inch of rainfall in the last ten hours.
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