Shawn Hymel's CLI Guide Frees Arduino UNO Q Users From the "Quite Limiting" App Lab

Maker Shawn Hymel has already found the Arduino App Lab, launched alongside the Arduino UNO Q single-board computer, to be a little restrictive for the more seasoned embedded developer — so has penned a guide to working with the Arduino UNO Q at the command-line instead.

"If you've been working with the Arduino UNO Q, you've probably noticed that Arduino's official approach pushes you toward using App Lab: a server-based development environment that runs on the [Arduino] UNO Q. While App Lab is a great starting point for beginners, I found it to be quite limiting. App Lab locks you into a web-based IDE and limits you to Arduino's built-in tools. With the CLI approach, you can work in VS Code with full IntelliSense, GitHub Copilot, and all your favorite extensions and linters. Or if you don’t like VS Code, feel free to use the editor of your choice."

Arduino launched the new UNO Q board back in October, at the same time as announcing its acquisition by Qualcomm. It's the first model in the long-running Arduino UNO family to not be powered by a microcontroller, though it has one — an STMicro STM32U585 — on-board as a coprocessor alongside its application-class Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210 system-on-chip. Despite its footprint and compatibility with existing Arduino UNO shields, it's a fully-fledged single-board computer — and the App Lab, which can run directly on-device for standalone use with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, is designed to make it easy to program applications that make full use of its capabilities.

For those already used to embedded development, though, the App Lab can feel restrictive — which is where Hymel's advice comes in. "Instead of black-box abstractions, you get full visibility into what’s happening during builds and deployments, the ability to customize build configurations, and the freedom to organize your project structure however you want," he explains. "The initial setup might take a few extra minutes, but the productivity gains and development flexibility are well worth it."

Hymel's guide, which walks through the replication of the "blink" LED-flashing example from App Lab using an SSH connection to the Arduino UNO Q and includes advice on connecting Microsoft's popular Visual Studio Code (VS Code) integrated development environment (IDE) to the board, is available on his website.