Re: Why not a Pi
I read an an interview with the guy who dreamed this up and he said they looked at other devices and he said to himself "I could do this" (tellingly AFTER the Raspberry PI foundation had been to see the BEEB to see about resurrecting the BBC Micro ), so effectively a nice project for him to fiddle with using license fee money, could easily have just done something around the Pi, Beaglebone or Arduino especially some of the wearable Arduinos which work out very cheap.
Also I think there's a limited expectations thing going on here saying other platforms are "too complicated" so ohh look shiny LED's but we don't want to scare you with anything like a realistic device that has the flexibility to grow with your experience.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
