Arduino vs ESP32 vs Raspberry Pi Pico for Schools: Which Board?

The short answer to Arduino vs ESP32 vs Raspberry Pi Pico for schools: most schools should start with the Arduino Uno. If your course goals include the Internet of Things (IoT), meaning devices that send data over Wi-Fi or are controlled from a phone, add the ESP32 as a second step; if your school already teaches Python, make the Raspberry Pi Pico the second board. Instead of trying to spend the whole year on one board, think in layers: in the first term the 5 V, error-tolerant and well-documented Uno builds the foundations of electronics and programming, and in the second term the same projects are repeated and extended on the second board that fits your goal.

This is not a personal buying guide; we covered which board one person should buy in which Arduino should I buy and Arduino vs ESP32, and you can get to know each board in what is ESP32 and what is Raspberry Pi Pico. Here we look at the question through a school's eyes: 24 students, 8 groups, computers that need administrator rights, 40–45 minute lessons and a cupboard full of equipment that will be used for several years. First comes the technical decision table, then recommendations by lesson goal and grade level, setup differences and a sample one-year plan.

Why is a school decision different from a personal one?

For someone buying one board at home, the key question is “what can I build with this board?”. At school the question becomes “what can 24 students learn with this board, at the same time, in the same lesson, with the fewest problems?”. A student who cannot find the port loses 5 minutes at home; in class, if three of eight groups cannot find the port, the lesson is over. That is why megahertz and kilobytes take a back seat at school. The questions that matter are: how many steps does setup take, does a wrongly placed wire damage the board, can sensors be connected directly, and can the teacher find ready-made lesson material?

Then there is time. School boards are usually used for several years, not one, and every year a new class opens the same cupboard. So the choice should not be “which board is more powerful?” but “which sequence of boards takes students to the next step?”. Program logic learned on the Uno continues on the ESP32 in the same language and on the Pico with the same concepts; that is where the strength of a layered plan comes from. Spending the whole year on one board is possible, but then either the first weeks become needlessly hard or students leave at the end of the year without ever seeing an important step such as wireless connectivity or a second language.

Decision table: how do Uno, ESP32 and Pico compare at school?

The table below compares the boards on the criteria that really make a difference at school. The ESP32 column is the 30-pin ESP32 DevKit (with an ESP32-WROOM-32 module), the most common one in schools; the Pico column covers the Raspberry Pi Pico and its wireless version, the Pico W. The Uno column is for the classic Uno R3; you will find the differences of the Uno R4 in our Arduino Uno R4 article.

Pay particular attention to two rows: operating voltage and error tolerance. Because the Uno's pins work at 5 V, most sensor modules on the market connect to it directly, and a wire a student plugs into the wrong hole usually just means the circuit does not work. The ESP32 and Pico pins are 3.3 V; if a 5 V signal reaches these pins, the pin or the board can be damaged. For one student this is a small detail, but in a class of 8 groups it directly affects your spare-board budget. The cost row should not decide on its own either: the price of the board is a small share of the total once breadboards, wires, sensors and spares are added.

Which board for which lesson goal?

Before choosing a board, write down in one sentence what students should be able to do at the end of the course. “Explain by measuring why an LED needs a resistor” and “see temperature data on a phone” call for different boards. All the starter projects in the table below are free in BlueGrays and open with their circuit diagram, parts list and code.

The two most often misunderstood rows are Python and IoT. Choosing the Pico to teach Python means students apply the for loop and if statement they write on the computer to an LED with the same syntax; a single line typed into Thonny's Shell lights the LED on the board immediately. For IoT, the ESP32's advantage is not only that Wi-Fi is on the board but that ESP32 projects are written in Arduino C++ just like on the Uno: the pinMode(), digitalRead() and if statements learned in the first term are used unchanged in the second, and students only learn how to connect to Wi-Fi and serve a web page. The Pico W can also connect to Wi-Fi; if your school wants both Python and IoT, the Pico W covers both needs on one board.

Recommendations by grade level

Age alone does not decide; of two classes of the same age, one may have done block coding before and the other may never have had a computing lesson. Still, lesson length, students' habits with keyboards and files, and the school timetable change noticeably by level. The table below sums up these differences; the “next step” column shows the step to take when students are ready, not necessarily within the same year.

Starting with blocks in middle school makes programs easier to read, but it does not change the board choice: most BlueGrays projects with blocks are Arduino projects, and the blocks are for reading the program; the board always gets the project's real code. If you want to see the C++ and MicroPython equivalents of the blocks side by side, check the blocks to C++ transition table. In high school and vocational training, knowing two boards is an achievement in itself: a student who has run the same sensor on a 5 V and a 3.3 V board will not ignore voltage levels again. In adult courses most participants come with a specific goal; asking “what do you want to build?” in the first lesson and choosing the board accordingly works better than walking everyone down the same path.

Setup on school computers: drivers, board package, Thonny and admin rights

The hidden cost of choosing a board at school is setup. A setup done once at home is repeated at school on 8 student computers and one teacher computer, and in most schools only the IT administrator is allowed to install software. The setup load of the three boards is clearly different:

One detail of the ESP32 board package often causes trouble at school: the package is not installed for the whole computer but into the folder of the user who is logged in. If students log in with a shared account, there is no problem; if everyone uses their own account, the package is downloaded again for each one. On computers that reset themselves to a clean state at every restart, the installation disappears the next day; in that case ask the IT administrator to add the package to the protected image. The Pico does not have this problem because MicroPython lives on the board itself: you prepare the board once, and Thonny recognises it on whichever computer it is plugged into all year.

When you go to the IT administrator, bring a clear list; instead of saying “please install Arduino”, hand over the items below. You can send the list with the Uno items before the first term and with the ESP32 or Pico items before the second:

1. The desktop version of Arduino IDE 2 on 8 student computers and 1 teacher computer.
2. The CH340, CP210x or CH9102 driver, depending on the USB chip of the compatible Uno or ESP32 boards; read the chip on the board once the order arrives.
3. If the ESP32 is used: the esp32 by Espressif Systems package from the Boards Manager and the libraries used in class; they must also be visible in student accounts.
4. If the Pico is used: Thonny. If a policy blocks USB storage, the RPI-RP2 drive the Pico shows in BOOTSEL mode will not appear either; flash MicroPython to the boards once on your own computer at the start of the term.
5. Student accounts must not be restricted from accessing USB serial ports.
6. After setup, a 10-minute test with a student account: plug in a board, select the port, upload example code.

A layered plan: a one-year example

Let's say you have 2 lessons a week, a class of 24 and students working in 8 groups of three. Assume you can use about 14 weeks of each term for hands-on work. In the first term everyone builds the same foundation on the Uno; in the second term, depending on the school's goal, you choose path A (ESP32, IoT) or path B (Pico, Python). Both paths deliberately start with a familiar project: students rebuild the first project of term one on the new board and see the difference for themselves. All the projects in the table are free.

In the first week of term two, do not teach a new topic; have students build the familiar LED project on the new board and ask only “what changed?”. Pin numbers, 3.3 V, selecting the board package on the ESP32 or the code being Python on the Pico are the answers, and students do not forget differences they found themselves. We prepared the first lesson of path A minute by minute in the ESP32 first lesson plan and the rest week by week in the 8-week ESP32 IoT module; for path B the 6-week Pico MicroPython plan can be used as is.

A layered plan also splits the budget. In the first year you invest only in Uno kits; because the second board works with the LEDs, resistors, buttons, LDRs and sensors from those kits, it mostly means just boards, cables and a few extra parts. In setting up a school Arduino lab we suggested a few ESP32 and Pico boards for demonstrations; if the whole class moves to the second board, count boards by the number of groups, not by the demonstration set. The second-layer list for 8 groups and 1 spare:

• Path A: 1 ESP32 DevKit per group, 9 for the class; 9 data cables that fit the board's USB port. Most ESP32 DevKits cover almost all of a single breadboard; joining two breadboards side by side and seating the board across the middle makes wiring easier.
• Path B: 1 Raspberry Pi Pico H or Pico WH (headers soldered) per group, 9 for the class; 9 micro USB data cables. If you buy Pico boards without headers, you need to set aside soldering time for 9 boards.
• For both paths: if a 5 V HC-SR04 is used, one 1 kΩ and one 2 kΩ resistor per group, 9 of each for the class; or a 3.3 V version of the sensor.
• For wireless weeks: a phone hotspot broadcasting at 2.4 GHz or a separate router instead of the school network (path A, and path B with the Pico W).

5 common mistakes schools make when choosing a board

• Buying an IoT board without an IoT goal: because the ESP32 is powerful, buying ESP32s for everyone in the first year is tempting. But if Wi-Fi is not used, students live with the 3.3 V limitation and extra setup steps without getting anything in return.
• Mixing boards in the same lesson: if four groups work with the Uno and four with the Pico, you are teaching two lessons at once. Switch boards at the end of a term or unit; in a mixed-ability class, differentiate with task difficulty, not with the board.
• Confusing the Pico with the Pico W: only the W version has Wi-Fi. If you plan a wireless unit, check for the W when ordering; for an introduction to Python the plain Pico is enough.
• Coming to class with charge-only cables: charge-only USB cables power the board but show no port, and students spend ages hunting for a driver problem. Test the cables one by one with a board at the start of term and mark the data cables.
• Assuming compatible boards are identical to the originals: compatible Uno and ESP32 boards make sense for a school budget, but their USB chips can differ and may need a driver. Before a bulk order, test a sample board on a school computer with a student account.

What the three boards look like in BlueGrays

BlueGrays groups its projects into three platforms, and the split fits a layered plan: there are more than 110 projects for Arduino, about 50 for the ESP32 and more than 30 for the Raspberry Pi Pico. 60 of them are completely free: 20 Arduino, 20 ESP32 and 20 Pico projects. Free projects include the circuit diagram, parts list, code and the Understand the code section; all the projects in the plan table above were picked from them. Arduino and ESP32 project code is Arduino C++, Pico project code is MicroPython. In Discover › Projects, use Filter to pick the platform and Price to list the free projects that match your course board.

• Project Finder: its second question is “Which board do you have?”, with the options Arduino Uno / Nano, ESP32, Raspberry Pi Pico and “I don't have a board yet”. Students get suggestions by picking the board they have, and the WARM UP FIRST · FREE suggestion on the results screen shows a free project to start with the same parts. More in the Project Finder article.
• Code guide: the Code guide in the Learn section has two tracks, Arduino C++ and MicroPython, with 18 cards each. Each card's example comes with Block, Arduino and MicroPython tabs, so a student on path B sees the C++ and Python versions of the same command side by side. The card list is in the code guide article.
• Daily questions: the Code language in questions setting can be Both, Arduino or MicroPython; a class on path B can switch to MicroPython questions in the second term.
• Let's build it together: the 3. Upload the code step of the guided mode changes with the board: for Arduino and ESP32 projects you choose the board and port from the Arduino IDE Tools menu, for Pico projects you choose the MicroPython interpreter in Thonny. Going through this step together on the projector in the first lesson cuts down setup questions.
• Premium and educator packages: Premium is tied to the account and unlocks the projects of all three platforms together; students do not need to buy anything else to move to the ESP32 or Pico in the second term. For a whole class, we explained how the 5- and 10-code, non-renewing packages under Profile > Educator Packages work in bulk Premium codes for your class.

6 questions to answer before deciding: take them to your department meeting

1. What should students be able to do at the end of the course: explain a circuit, write code, send data to a network?
2. Does the school teach Python or C++, and if so, in which year groups?
3. How many groups will work, and how many spare boards will you keep?
4. Who has the rights to install software on the computers, and how long will setup take?
5. Are your sensors 5 V or 3.3 V, and do they fit the second board?
6. Does the school network allow devices to connect, or will you need a hotspot?

If the answers to the first two questions are clear, the board follows on its own: the Uno for basic electronics and algorithms, the ESP32 for connectivity, the Pico for Python. Before you decide, opening the free projects in this plan in the BlueGrays app with their circuit diagrams and code and going through them one evening is the quickest way to see which path suits your class.