Hands-On with the Arduino UNO Q

As first reported here on Hackster News, Qualcomm recently acquired Arduino. This is a huge deal for the maker and open source hardware community, as Arduino is near-synonymous with this world, and Qualcomm is perhaps best known for making smartphone chips.

This may initially seem like a strange amalgamation: a huge company acquires a well-known, but much smaller maker of (mostly) open source hardware. Perhaps Qualcomm is looking towards the future, with the goal of making their chips easier to use in education, and thus familiar to current students who will eventually decide what chips their companies will buy.

Their new Arduino UNO Q — the focus of this hands-on unboxing/first use article — will reportedly continue with Arduino’s open-source tradition. If a company were to clone it, they’d be using Qualcomm’s chips, so it's a win for them either way. The 'Q “is the most capable Arduino UNO ever,” According to Marcello Majonchi, Chief Product Officer at Arduino, and the Arduino UNO Q product listing says the following:

[The Arduino UNO Q] combines a Linux® Debian-capable Qualcomm® Dragonwing™ QRB2210 microprocessor with a real-time STM32U585 microcontroller (MCU). It’s Arduino, it’s a computer, it’s anything you want to build.

But how well does it actually work?

I got to try one out, and while I would have to agree with Majonchi’s "most capable" statement on paper, this little board isn’t without its drawbacks. Check out my experience in the video below, and/or read on for my initial analysis.

Initial experience: a rocky start

During the unboxing — including some rather fantastic socks and an Arduino-themed bag — it was evident that the board has a lot of capabilities stuffed onto it. Unlike the relatively sparse standard UNO board, it’s packed with multiple chips, an array of LEDs, Qwiic connector, single USB-C port, and more.

I downloaded and installed the new Arduino App Lab on my Intel Mac, which was a standard drag-and-drop process. My computer noted — of course — that this is a scary app downloaded from the Internet, a warning that possibly saves tens of people from malware each year.

After loading the program and connecting to the Arduino Q, it invited me to update it via the Arduino flasher tool. Strangely, this tool was only listed in Arm and AMD versions for macOS. I eventually had success with the “AMD” version on my Intel Mac (more on this later).

App Lab then invited me to update again, which reportedly failed, but then seemed OK after restarting the application. I then ran the Blink LED with UI, which generated a local web page (after finding its location with an IP address scanner), but the actual LED didn’t blink with the button.

I found this initial experience buggy to say the least, and if I were someone new to microcontrollers and/or the world of Arduino, I likely would have been extremely frustrated. Not a great start. But it does get better.

A fresh look: MacOS, standalone Linux, Arduino IDE

Using the App Lab on your computer isn't the only way to run programs on the Arduino UNO Q. You can actually use the 'Q as a Linux desktop computer, and program it — using itself — in the App Lab. You can also program it in the Arduino IDE, and it's listed in Arduino's Cloud Editor, though I didn't test this functionality.

After my initial, rocky start, I tried again the next day. First with the App Lab on my Intel Mac, then with the UNO Q acting as a Linux computer, and finally with the Arduino IDE running on my Mac. My not-quite-initial results were encouraging:

• MacOS App Lab: I downloaded/reinstalled the App Lab again (and recorded the process for posterity). This time, the Blink LED with UI worked properly, and I found the simple blink sketch that changes an onboard LED’s state every second. I even copied and modified the Python (?!) code that regulates the blinking, speeding it up to .1 second between state changes. Encouraging!
• Standalone Linux desktop: Next, I tried this out as a standalone Linux machine, plugging a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and power supply into a USB hub, allowing it to sort out the routing details. As I hadn’t written my password down, I had to re-flash the device to allow me to reassign the password and get into the desktop environment.
  
  Once in, the App Lab popped up for a roughly identical experience to the macOS desktop version, allowing me to run and modify the simple blink sketch without issue. You can also use it as a (rather slow) general-purpose desktop, browsing Hackster.io, for example.

• Arduino IDE: You can also program the UNO Q via the traditional Arduino IDE, though I saved this until last to avoid any surprises that would derail this review. Actually, the surprise was that this works without issue. Just search for and install the Arduino Q board package, flash the blink sketch, and it starts blinking away. It still generates a standalone desktop environment when properly connected, allowing you to run the Blink LED from App Lab.
  
  I assume the formerly programmed Arduino-C code is somehow erased in favor of the Python App Lab code, but I’m not certain. This sort of dual-nature board left me with a few questions that are probably answered… somewhere.

Good things for those who wait?

Working with this board on day two (November 6th) was a much better experience than day one (November 5th). While it might have been there, I didn't initially notice the simple blink sketch in the App Lab, and the process seemed less buggy on day two.

Most of the time, I'd write this off to my own foibles, but in this case I’m not sure. Per my Tweets below, the Flasher listing appears to have changed from "AMD" to the more accurate "x86" during this time. Perhaps other things have changed as well, given my day two imaging of the 'Q (thus the specific date references above for posterity).

It’s nice that Quarduino is listening to user concerns. On the other hand, if their users are also beta testers, that’s a recipe for frustration. You might also argue that it’s time for me to buy a new computer (it probably is).

Who is the Arduino UNO Q for? [Education, probably]

When I initially started with the UNO Q, I was rather discouraged. However, I’m starting to see where it has some potential, especially for those who have outgrown the microcontroller-only UNO's capabilities.

At a list price of $44 — and with hardware orders of magnitude more capable than what got man to the moon — it’s too complicated and expensive to justify giving to beginners for self-directed LED blinking. I also suspect advanced hardware developers would prefer something a bit more modular on which to develop projects that will eventually morph into production boards.

OTOH, maybe having the proverbial kitchen sink available could be good for early experimentation. Developers would just need to be familiar with the UNO Q's capabilities, preferably with the help of available community resources, both of which will take time to develop.

Where I could see this being implemented soon is in education. Unlike a Raspberry Pi single-board computer, there’s no memory card to worry about, and it just boots into its Linux environment when properly connected with a hub to a monitor and the appropriate inputs. That would be ideal if you have 10-20 of these devices that you need to worry about coordinating in a classroom setting.

What would make this even better would be an all-in-one hub add-on, so you’re not having to fiddle with the proper adapter. Or an all-in-one device like the Raspberry Pi 400 kit would be even better. Just plug and play... and educate (once you fill in your credentials)! Then again, the Raspberry Pi 400 and small-form-factor PCs are a thing, so there are other options to consider.

Final thoughts: Worth buying?

Is this device for you? Well, that depends. If you want to blink an LED, there are numerous easier and cheaper ways to accomplish this task. If you want an easy way to work with AI tools for experimentation and/or be on the cutting edge of what's new in the open source/maker world, the Arduino UNO Q could be worth a look right now.

Or maybe it will be good in a year or two if a strong community develops around it to help people take advantage of the massive onboard hardware capabilities. Unfortunately, given the wide variety of SBC and microcontroller options available today, it’s hard to see that happening in the same way it did with the (original) UNO circa 2010, when it became something of the de facto microcontroller experimentation standard.

If I were a teacher tasked with presenting AI to a group of students, I would be very interested in this type of all-in-one board. If Arduino/Qualcomm gets a few early kinks worked out, it could make certain classroom tasks more straightforward.

For now, I hope that we’ll see more UNO Qs used in the wild in 2026 and beyond. If, however, you plan to simply blink an LED with it, for once I’ll have to throw in with the “just use a 555” people. Or perhaps we've come to the point where “just use an ATmega-based Arduino UNO” will become the common refrain of project hecklers.

But seriously, be nice! -JC