What will you build next? With Arduino^® UNO Q board, you can explore a range of projects, whether you’re exploring your first project or ready to tackle something more ambitious.

And with our Black Friday holiday deals on UNO Q bundles, the available promotional pricing may help reduce the cost of eligible bundle hardware. Want some inspiration? Here are five projects to get you thinking and planning.

Give your plants a little extra TLC with a smart plant monitor

Ever wonder what your plants would tell you if they could talk? This UNO Q plant monitor uses sensors to collect information about the plant’s environment. Using sensors to track soil moisture, light, and temperature, it logs readings to a dashboard and sends daily updates through Telegram. It’s a practical way to explore environmental sensing and connected applications while monitoring selected environmental conditions around your plant.

Explore the healthy plant monitoring project.

Bring retro gaming to life with an UNO Q Arcade controller

Who says retro gaming belongs in the past? Turn your UNO Q into an arcade gaming setup using the Arduino^® Modulino Joystick, buttons, and Movement Modules. The project translates physical inputs into mouse movements and keystrokes, letting you control retro games running on UNO Q. It’s a fun way to explore the connection between physical control and Linux-based computing.

Build your own UNO Q Arcade controller.

Give your next project legs—build your own MiniKame quadruped robot

Four legs, plenty of personality, and an intriguing engineering challenge. Next on our list is the MiniKame quadrupled robot project that takes you through designing, assembling, and programming a desktop walking robot. With detailed explanations covering mechanical design, movement principles, and software, it’s an engaging project for makers ready to explore robotics beyond the basics.

Build your own MiniKame.

Make some noise with a DIY synthesizer

Your rock star dreams may be on hold but your next hit doesn’t have to be. Here’s your chance to make some noise, Arduino style. This project configures UNO Q as a playable instrument with a drum machine and polyphonic synthesizer. Using Modulino modules and Pure Data, this project turns sensor readings and physical controls into musical expression. Experiment with rhythms, melodies, and sound effects while exploring creative possibilities of interactive electronics.

Explore the DIY synth project.

Build a custom SBC controller

Create your own control setup. Turn your UNO Q into a customizable single-board computer (SBC) controller using Modulino Joystick, Buttons, and Knob modules. Translate physical inputs into movements and keystrokes, customize settings through live web interface, and add visual feedback with Modulino pixels. It’s a hands-on way to explore human-machine interaction and customize the demonstrated control interface.

Explore the UNO Q SBC controller project.

Bonus build: A clock fit for Cinderella

Can you guess what happens when Arduino meets a little theatre magic? You get a giant, 12-foot, remote-controlled clock built for a stage production of Cinderella. This impressive creation uses Wi-Fi connectivity and motor control to bring an oversized stage prop to life. It demonstrates the use of Arduino hardware in a large stage prop. Who says Arduino projects have to fit on your workbench?

Explore the giant clock theater project.

On your mark, get set, build!

Ready to jump in and build your next creation? Whether you’re creating a smart home, experimenting with robotics, or bringing a completely unexpected idea to life, there’s always something new to explore with UNO Q. And with our Black Friday holiday savings on UNO Q bundles, there has never been a more perfect time to start.

Discover all the available UNO Q bundle offers.

Arduino, UNO, and Modulino are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

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As part of the Arduino UNO Q Dream Lab Challenge hosted in partnership with DigiKey, makers and innovators were challenged to push the boundaries of what is possible with the dual-brain Arduino^® UNO Q board and Arduino App Lab. From an incredible pool of creative submissions showcasing the board’s unique dual-brain architecture, this entry emerged as one of the top winning designs.

You likely have a local weather service that will provide you with free information about the environmental conditions in great detail. But how well can you make sense of that data? Is a value of 54 for PM2.5 good or bad? Most people only care if the values are bad enough that they should be concerned, which is why Next Builder designed Atmosis to automatically determine if that is the case.

On the hardware side, Atmosis isn’t that much different than a conventional DIY environmental data monitor. It has an UNO Q, an Adafruit DPS310 sensor (barometric pressure and altitude), a Waveshare X6 sensor (various gases, temperature, humidity), a Waveshare dust sensor, and an LED strip that acts as an indicator. All of that hardware fits inside of a compact and rather fetching 3D-printed enclosure.

But while most environmental sensor devices like this simply tell you the sensor readings, Atmosis is built to use onboard edge AI, deployed through Edge Impulse, to automatically analyze the data. It looks at all the sensor readings and lets the user know when it identifies data that may need attention.

In most cases, that is all the user needs. But sometimes, a user might want to explore the data with more nuance or receive a more detailed evaluation. That’s why Next Builder gave Atmosis the ability to also work through Google’s Gemini LLM. That can dig into the sensor readings, look up references, and provide information in response to users’ questions.

Whether or not Gemini gets involved, the user can view the information through a web interface. They can also choose to receive updates from a Telegram bot.

Most areas will have more comprehensive data available from local weather stations than Atmosis can provide. However, your exact location may be unique, either as a result of differing micro climates or because of localized conditions, such as dust at a worksite. In those cases, Atmosis aims to provide valuable information that is easy to digest.

Arduino, UNO, and the Arduino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

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Arduino has always had a special relationship with musicians. Makers in the community have been wiring up theremins and building MIDI controllers from scratch for decades, driven by the simple idea that if you want to play an instrument, you should be able to build it. It worked for Brian May, right?

When we launched the Arduino^® UNO R4 board, we noticed the experiments were evolving in step with the technology. Gustavo Silveira, a composer and self-described “nerd musician”, had already built his iconic XT Synth – a hybrid guitar-violin-MIDI controller – by learning everything he knew from the community and giving it straight back. Tigris Li used UNO R4 to build a custom DJ controller. And Clatters Machines, the Italian duo devoted to making “noisy machines for music lovers”, prototyped their very first product on an UNO and never really looked back.

And these aren’t outliers. Browse the Arduino Project Hub and you’ll find a variety of instruments, effects units, sequencers, and sound controllers powered by Arduino, made by people who just wanted to hear something that didn’t exist yet. And then, of course, there are synths. So many synths.

Which got us thinking two things. First, UNO Q brings huge new potential to musicians and artists – and we can’t wait to see what they’ll create. Second, what if we made it easier and faster to put together a working synth, so no creative juices were wasted figuring out which components to buy or how to wire sensors together? That’s how the UNO Q DIY synth bundle came to be.

Black Friday deal: the UNO Q DIY synth bundle is now 35% off on the Arduino Store, until November 30, 2026. If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to build your first instrument – or you’re looking for a gift for the music-maker in your life – this is it. 

The bundle: everything you need to start, nothing to hold you back

The bundle packages a UNO Q 4GB board with four Arduino^® Modulino nodes – Buttons, Movement, Knob, and Distance – plus Qwiic cables and a complete step-by-step guide available on Arduino Project Hub. You get a polyphonic synthesizer, a drum machine, gestural control, proximity-based sound shaping, and full Pure Data integration: all in one purchase, with no components to track down separately.

The Arduino Project Hub tutorial walks you through the whole build: how the Modulino nodes connect to the STM32 microcontroller side on UNO Q, how sensor data crosses the Bridge to the Linux side, and how Pure Data runs on UNO Q, and maps the synthesis parameters in real time. Tilting the Movement node changes pitch. Knob adjusts parameters. Buttons give you a drum pad. The Distance sensor adds proximity control over filter behavior. The tutorial also links to 3D-printable enclosure files on Printables, if you want to give the whole thing a proper physical form factor.

You need exactly zero coding experience to tackle all of this. The software comes pre-configured, and the assembly is straightforward thanks to mistake-proof Qwiic connectors and daisy-chaining. You’ll learn loads along the way, just like the first time you pick up a guitar. Technology with Arduino is a lot more about figuring things out through practice, rather than studying and preparing to get things right on the first try.

Where to take it next

And just like learning a new instrument, the fun part comes after mastering the basics. Once you’ve followed the tutorial and you have a working synth in front of you – tilt it, twist the knob, wave your hand near the distance sensor, feel how it responds – the question becomes: what do you actually want it to do?

Here are a few directions worth exploring:

VJ control. The same sensor data you’re already streaming to Pure Data can be routed to visual software like Processing, TouchDesigner, or VVVV. Tie your tilt angle to a visual parameter, your drum hits to a strobe effect, your proximity sensor to a color shift. Your synth becomes a performance instrument that controls both sound and image simultaneously.

RFID scene switching. Add an RFID reader to the setup and program different NFC tags to load different Pure Data patches or parameter presets. Tap a tag, change your entire sound setup instantly. It’s a physical, tactile way to switch between scenes in a live performance without touching a laptop.

Generative sequencing. The Linux side on UNO Q can run Python scripts alongside the Pure Data workflow. Feed sensor readings into a simple generative algorithm that creates evolving melodic patterns based on your movement or environment – a synth that reacts to the room, not just your hands.

Expand the sensor palette. The Modulino system is designed for daisy-chaining. Add a Modulino Thermo and map temperature to reverb depth. Add a Modulino Pixels LED strip as a visual feedback layer. Every node you add is a new dimension of control.

The UNO Q DIY synth bundle gets you set up. The Modulino ecosystem and the UNO Q dual-architecture give you the building blocks to go well beyond it. Anything you create with these tools, well, is music to our ears!

Ready to start? Get the UNO Q DIY synth bundle on the Arduino Store. 

Already sold out? Try Amazon for additional stock – just make sure to choose original Arduino. 

Follow the Project Hub tutorial, then create your own project and share with the community!

Arduino, Modulino, UNO, and the Arduino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

The post Learn to make your own music – with the Arduino® UNO™ Q board appeared first on Arduino Blog.

According to a 2025 report from the WHO and UNICEF, approximately an entire quarter of the world’s population currently lacks consistent access to safely managed drinking water. The report also states that many people without safely managed drinking water had access to basic drinking water services. Thomas Vikström developed WaterLens as a tool intended to help users assess certain water quality indicators.

WaterLens is a compact device designed to give communities an affordable ability to monitor their local water sources. It is not a substitute for comprehensive laboratory testing and should not be used by itself to determine whether water is safe to drink. The device is designed to provide supplemental information when laboratory testing is not readily available. Its creator also designed it to be constructed and operated without advanced technical skills.

A WaterLens device can be assembled using off-the-shelf components that connect without soldering. Those components include an Arduino^® UNO Q board, a Seeed Studio Grove Base Shield, a Grove OLED screen, a Grove dual-button module, and a host of Grove sensors. Those sensors are designed to measure pH, turbidity, total dissolved solids (TDS), and oxidation-reduction potential (ORP).

Displaying measurements from each sensor may be useful, but interpreting those measurements may require relevant water quality expertise. WaterLens runs a local model, trained and deployed with Edge Impulse, that is designed to identify potential anomalies in the sensor data.

WaterLens may help identify sensor readings that warrant further investigation. A sample with no detected anomalies should not be assumed to be safe to drink, and a detected anomaly does not by itself establish that the water is unsafe. WaterLens cannot and should not replace validated water quality testing. Where laboratory testing is not readily available, the device may provide supplemental information that can help users decide whether further evaluation is appropriate. 

Arduino and UNO are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

The post WaterLens uses AI on the edge to detect water quality issues appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Arduino, Qualcomm Technologies, and Edge Impulse recently teamed up with Hackster to host the Invent the Future competition. The competition attracted 4,028 registrants and 1,202 hardware applications, culminating in 153 final project submissions across a wide range of real-world applications.

There were several categories in the competition, all unified by the UNO Q board and Arduino® App Lab. The judging is officially complete and the winners have been announced, which means we get to show you the top projects that most impressed the judges and took home the awards!

These winning creations illustrate a range of uses for the UNO Q – and stay tuned, because we’ll also be shining the spotlight on many other fantastic contest submissions in the coming days.

Best Social Impact

While sustainability was a consideration for every category, the Best Social Impact award went to a project built explicitly to make the world a better place. The winning project was the Smart Water Guardian AI, built by KOCHONI Biaou David Barthélémy.

This project puts the edge AI capabilities demonstrated by UNO Q to good use, by monitoring water-quality indicators in real time. Through a host of sensors, it is designed to measure everything from temperature and pH to turbidity and dissolved solids content, allowing for detection of anomalies that correlate with poor water quality – detection that could save lives.

Best in Home Automation

Home automation is a thriving industry, and there are all kinds of tech products you can use to build the smart house of your dreams. But what about your chickens’ house? That’s what Coders Cafe’s Smart Coop 2.0 is for.

Smart Coop 2.0 is a system design, driven by an UNO Q, for intended to support routine chicken care. It is built to handle the basics, like dispensing feed on a schedule and heating the space, using local AI models designed to detect eggs and potential predators. The creator designed Smart Coop 2.0 to make certain chicken-care tasks more convenient and to detect potential predators, including coyotes and foxes.

Best in Gaming

RollerCoaster Tycoon was a popular video game generally among two types of people: those who enjoy creative building and those who like maximizing metrics. Kevin Loeffler is the latter type, and he wondered how real-life roller coasters might stack up. The result is RCT IRL, which is a wearable sensor system for classifying and quantifying roller coaster rides.

“Wearable” here means an UNO Q, a SparkFun 9DoF IMU (inertial measurement unit), and a battery stuffed into a fanny pack. During a coaster ride, the dual-brain board from Arduino is structured to collect movement data through the IMU. Afterwards, three Edge Impulse models are designed to process the data and generate model-based scores labeled Excitement, Intensity, and Nausea. Together with interesting stats like ride time and maximum g-forces, those values populate a report card for the roller coaster, just like in the game.

Best in Industrial IoT

HaloSense V1 is pasquale887’s attempt to give humans new senses via neuroplasticity. In short, neuroplasticity is your brain’s ability to accommodate new functions. Of course, there isn’t anything supernatural or superhuman about that, and your brain can only work with the sensory input it receives. HaloSense V1 provides new information through the senses you already have.

Or, to put it another way, HaloSense V1 is a haptic feedback headset. Through an array of 13 haptic feedback motors, it pulses and buzzes to convey information gathered through sensors connected to an UNO Q. The project is intended to explore whether, over time, a wearer can learn to interpret the haptic patterns as information.

Best in Robotics

We’re in the midst of a shift in robotics towards human-friendly designs. Mohammed Akramuddin’s Curie is engineered to be as friendly as it gets. This little desktop robot is cute, with facial expressions displayed on an OLED screen. The creator designed it to help users, including those with ADHD, manage tasks. 

Like all of the other projects in this competition, Curie contains an UNO Q board. It connects to various APIs, including Groq (a cloud interface that is built to let developers run open-source artificial intelligence models at high speeds), to help its owner manage their workload. It is designed to do that in the usual digital assistant ways, by taking notes and setting reminders, but also by providing more tailored assistance. It can, for example, break a complex task up into small pieces that are more approachable. It is also designed to identify potential distraction and provide a nudge to help users return to their task.

Best in Show

The Best in Show award went to the overall competition winner, regardless of category. The winner was Jorge Eldis González for his work on the Edge-AI Spectrophotometer, which is, as its name indicates, a spectrophotometer that integrates AI on the edge.

A spectrophotometer measures the wavelength of light, in order to detect the properties of sampled materials. That is a non-destructive analysis and can, for instance, tell you if a sample contains contaminants.

The Edge-AI Spectrophotometer is built using commercially available components, using an UNO Q and a SparkFun Electronics AS7343 Triad Spectroscopy Sensor. It then runs a machine learning inference model on the edge, which detects deviations from known baselines. The creator designed the project to make its testing workflow more accessible to less-experienced operators and to explore additional spectrophotometry applications.

Congratulations to all the winners! 

Qualcomm branded products are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. Arduino, UNO, and the Arduino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

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^{Linux mascot Tux the penguin was created by Larry Ewing using GIMP}

The idea that changed how we build technology

Happy Linux Day, Arduino Fans!

Since 1991, Linux has helped popularize open-source software. And then Arduino, inspired by that, extended that open source concept to hardware with its own launch in 2005. The open-source movement did not stop at the screen; it also influenced the development of physical computing. As we celebrate Linux Day, we honor the collaborative ethos that helped shape the internet and the Arduino movement. Just as Linux democratized software by opening the kernel, Arduino liberated hardware from corporate labs, proving that when we freely share our blueprints from C++ to circuit schematics, we empower a global community to build the future together.

Linux meets the physical world

Imagine building an autonomous robot where the engineering challenge isn’t just running computer vision, but seamlessly bridging that user-space intelligence with bare-metal physical execution. The Arduino^® UNO Q board solves this by unifying a Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210 microprocessor running a full Debian Linux environment with an STM32U585 microcontroller for real-time, deterministic hardware control. This dual architecture gives developers the established capabilities of Debian’s package ecosystem and networking stack for AI workloads, while the bare-metal microcontroller supports real-time control of motors, sensors, and actuators, including sub-millisecond operations where supported by the applicable configuration and workload.

This integrated architecture is designed to reduce the friction associated with bridging separate computing and control hardware.By unifying real-time control with Debian’s robust software ecosystem, the UNO Q can help developers focus on building applications across robotics, computer vision, and industrial automation.The platform illustrates how advanced computing and bare-metal execution can be combined in an open, collaborative development environment.

From ideas to real world builds

The real power of open source comes to life in what people can create with it. Across the Arduino community, makers and developers can explore a broad range of possibilities, from desktop companion robots to autonomous systems that tackle everyday problems, and beyond. Whether they’re experimenting with the UNO Q or Arduino^® VENTUNO Q board, sharing their ingenuity through competitions and hackathons, or inspiring others with creative builds, these projects turn bold ideas into working solutions. Here are a few builds that caught our attention, built by community members using Arduino hardware and Linux-based capabilities.

Curie: An AI companion for ADHD and cognitive focus grounding

Curie is an open-source desk companion built on UNO Q, intended to interact through audio and vision features to help users begin tasks and maintain focus. Learn more.

Autonomous pantry assistant

An autonomous edge AI assistant that identifies pantry products and reads their labels aloud for people with low vision. Learn more.

A robot arm that sees you

Imagine a robot arm designed to detect configured users and deliver selected objects. The arm runs on Feetech digital servo motors with a Waveshare control board, and a camera on the head handles the recognition. Learn more.

Depth multitool on the VENTUNO Q

One ordinary webcam, a depth model on the VENTUNO Q NPU, and four visualization modes for estimating the distance of objects within the camera’s field of view. Learn more.

Building on open foundations

Many community projects build on open-source software and hardware. Arduino continues to strengthen that foundation with new hardware, software, and tools that give developers more ways to experiment, create, and solve difficult problems. The 2026 Arduino Open Source Report highlights this motion and key contributions from our vibrant, passionate community. Here are just a few of the highlights, reported by Arduino as part of its open-source ecosystem:

• 6 new open source hardware boards
• 11 new official libraries
• Arduino^® App Lab for UNO Q

The community led with:

• 1,218 new libraries, bringing the total to 8,754
• 6,602 new versions of libraries
• 420 new open source projects

The next chapter

As AI descends from the cloud to power the next generation of autonomous robots and edge devices, open-source development continues to play an important role in this area. The convergence of Linux, Arduino, and edge intelligence is helping enable new physical-computing applications, and it is the global community that will define what is possible. That is the true spirit of Linux Day: a brilliant, decentralized future we are building together.

Qualcomm branded products are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. Arduino, UNO, and VENTUNO are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

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Want real-world experience developing AI models and deploying applications using cutting-edge technologies such as the Arduino^® UNO Q board? Qualcomm Academy has a new second-level program for you! The AI Associate Certification: Model to App is a hands-on, online, and self-paced program designed to provide experience with the end-to-end ML workflow, including data preparation, model creation, optimization, deployment, and on-device inference. 

Through approximately five to six hours of build-along training, you’ll enjoy a combination of technical depth and practical application, helping you develop the confidence to create accurate, efficient, and production-ready AI solutions at the edge.

Three projects. One complete edge AI journey.

To achieve their certification, participants use a learning-focused development kit based on UNO Q to complete three real-world projects that span voice, vision, and sensor-based AI:

• Wake Word Detection: Create and optimize a voice-enabled application that recognizes predefined wake words.
• Person Recognition: Build a computer vision application that processes image data and performs real-time inference on an edge device.
• Gesture Recognition: Train a model using IMU sensor data to detect and classify movements in real time.

Each project connects model architecture, training, validation, quantization, deployment, and application integration so learners can explore the ML lifecycle in practice.

Build skills for real-world edge AI development

By completing the certification, you will gain hands-on experience with developing ML models, preparing data, quantizing and optimizing models to explore tradeoffs among accuracy, latency, power consumption, and performance, and visualizing model graphs. You will also gain experience with AI development toolchains, explore MCU and MPU capabilities, develop real-time applications, and work with FastRPC communication for AI workloads.

The program is designed for developers and engineers, embedded systems professionals, IoT and robotics developers, students, and industry professionals interested in gaining practical experience with ML and edge AI. Learners should have basic Python skills, familiarity with an IDE, introductory knowledge of PyTorch and ML concepts, and prior hands-on experience equivalent to the Qualcomm Academy foundational AI certificate programs.

Flexible learning, practical results

The AI Associate Certification: Model to App is available online and can be completed at each learner’s own pace. You may purchase the program via Qualcomm Academy. After successfully completing the certification requirements, you will receive a Qualcomm Technologies certificate and badge that can be displayed on your CV and LinkedIn profile.

Start building – from model to app!

Take the next step in your AI development journey. Enroll in the AI Associate Certification: Model to App and gain hands-on experience applying ML concepts to applications running at the edge.

Enroll now!

Visiting Maker Faire Rome (October 23rd–25th)? Make sure to stop by the Arduino booth to talk to the team about how you can get your AI Associate Certification: Model to App. 

Qualcomm Academy is a program of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. Arduino and UNO are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

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When running UNO Q as a standalone single-board computer, navigating its Linux desktop environment doesn’t have to mean reaching for a standard mouse and keyboard. One of the most rewarding aspects of combining microcontrollers with a full operating system is the freedom to design custom physical interfaces – turning buttons, knobs, and joysticks into direct, tactile controls for your software.

To support that experience, we’re introducing the UNO Q SBC Controller Bundle. Designed for makers, learners, and innovators, this kit brings together hardware, software, and step-by-step guides to help you build a customized control setup.

What’s included in the box?

At the heart of the bundle is the dual-brain UNO Q 4GB board. To create a physical input layout as an alternative to certain traditional input functions, the kit includes a curated set of Arduino^® Modulino nodes: Buttons, Joystick, Knob, and Pixels for dynamic visual feedback.

The included components connect through the Arduino^® App Lab development environment. To give your finished project a clean, product-like appearance, we also offer a downloadable, 3D-printable enclosure that you can print or modify for your design.

Bringing physical control to your Linux workflows

Running Linux directly on your development board supports a range of potential applications, as we recently explored in our overview of what Linux unlocks on the UNO Q board. Whether you’re managing local Home Assistant dashboards, launching retro games, or controlling edge AI routines, physical controls provide another way to interact with your system.

Building your own controller offers a hands-on way to explore human-machine interaction, helping you learn how physical inputs translate into operating system commands. Thanks to the modular nature of the Modulino ecosystem, the setup is designed to be flexible – you can reconfigure supported input mappings or swap in compatible components as your project evolves. Detailed walkthroughs are already available here on Arduino Project Hub with instructions for assembling the featured configuration.

Completing your desktop setup

If you’re turning your UNO Q into a complete desktop station, a few optional accessories can round out your build. The Arduino^® USB-C Hub (8 in 1) adds HDMI output, Ethernet, and extra USB ports, while the official Arduino USB-C Power Supply (45W) and Arduino USB-C Cable (24 pin) are designed to provide compatible power delivery for the UNO Q setup.

Head over to the Arduino Store to explore the new UNO Q SBC Controller Bundle, download the 3D-printable files, and start crafting your own custom hardware interface today!

Arduino, UNO, and Modulino are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

The post Build your own physical interface with the new Arduino® UNO™ Q SBC Controller Bundle appeared first on Arduino Blog.

There is a vast gulf between making a one-off prototype and mass-production at scale. Within that gulf, there are innumerable small teams and businesses churning out PCBs in relatively low quantities – say dozens or hundreds a month. Inspection needs in that market are under-served, but Mukesh Sankhla designed a solution: a very affordable automated PCB inspection system.

This is a small, desktop-friendly setup intended for vision-based PCB inspection. It has a turntable with six stations and can automatically rotate through those, analyzing the PCB in each slot. It can identify specific components and check for anything missing, as well as defects. It does so with a camera view and YOLO vision models, deployed using Edge Impulse.

That is especially impressive because the system is easy and affordable to build. All it requires is an Arduino^® UNO Q board, a LED, a webcam, and a servo motor. The servo rotates the platform underneath the webcam, which resides in an overhead mount. The STM32 in the UNO Q is able to control the servo movement, while the Linux side can run the vision models.

The entire structure is 3D-printable and can be adapted to the user’s needs. The turntable, for example, is customizable to cradle the PCBs being inspected. It would also be simple to alter the size of the turntable and decrease or increase the number of stations. For instance, four stations would allow for a workflow that inspects both sides of unpopulated boards and both sides of populated boards.

Arduino, UNO, and the Arduino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

The post Building a super-affordable automated PCB inspection system appeared first on Arduino Blog.

A year ago, we shared two pieces of news at once. Arduino was joining the Qualcomm Technologies family, and the Arduino® UNO Q board was on its way.

The promise was simple: bring real computing power and edge AI to makers, students, and professionals, without losing the openness and joy that make Arduino what it is.

Twelve months later, you have responded to our biggest announcement ever in ways we could not have scripted.

Thank you.

The year in numbers*

You didn’t just try UNO Q. You built an ecosystem around it.

• 270,000+ UNO Q shipped worldwide
• 400+ events across the ecosystem
• 4,000+ contest participants, who delivered 250+ official builds
• 850+ topics about UNO Q on the Arduino Forum

One year in, the Arduino community continues to grow and thrive. The number of projects shared on Project Hub has nearly doubled year on year, while Arduino library downloads grew roughly 50% year on year, reaching 244+ million downloads in the last 12 months, compared with 165+ million in the previous year. The Arduino IDE also reached 35+ million downloads

Behind those numbers is something more interesting: a year of people discovering what happens when Arduino meets serious computing and AI. 

*As of September 29, 2026

Where it started

UNO Q brought together two worlds that had rarely lived on the same Arduino board: a Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210 microprocessor, with AI acceleration, quad-core performance and graphics, coupled with a real-time STM32U585 microcontroller. 

That combination is what makes UNO Q different. One side can run Linux, AI models, and demanding applications. The other can handle deterministic, real-time control. Together, they let developers bring the two worlds together in a way that feels like Arduino.

UNO Q launched alongside Arduino® App Lab, introducing a new way to build: an Arduino sketch on the MCU working together with a Python program on the MPU, packaged as one application. Suddenly, projects that once needed separate boards, computers or more complicated setups could start from a single Arduino.

Debian Linux for UNO Q brought a curated Linux environment to the board, making it easier to get started with the MPU side of the board. Arduino App Lab evolved throughout the year, adding new capabilities and workflows. We also brought Qualcomm Linux to UNO Q, giving developers another path into the Qualcomm ecosystem while keeping Arduino at the center of the experience. 

In August, Agentic Mode brought AI-assisted development to an Arduino desktop IDE for the first time. 

Your ideas, our proudest moments

From computer vision and local LLMs to music, healthcare, and smart everyday tools, we’ve seen an incredible range of ideas take shape.

We selected 12 standout projects that capture just some of the creativity and ambition of the UNO Q community.

And the creativity is still unfolding. Our Invent the Future with Arduino UNO Q and App Lab contest with Hackster is wrapping up, with the winners set to be announced on October 9. See the contest on Hackster

• JBR-001, a desktop companion robot
• XGO-Duck, a fully open-source robot
• DIY-ECG, exploring real-time health monitoring
• Local LLMs and VLMs on UNO Q
• NetraHz: Camera-free fall detection
• DIY Synth
• Gesture Detection
• Arcade Cabinet
• Inverted Pendulum
• Local Weather Station
• Smart Mirror
• AI Plant Guardian

Open by design: UNO and beyond

When Arduino joined Qualcomm, some wondered what it would mean for Arduino’s open approach. One year later, the answer is simple: openness remains at our core.

Arduino remains open source, with open hardware schematics and software under MPL, AGPL, and GPL. And this year, we continued to open up the tools behind UNO Q, including Arduino App Lab, available on GitHub for developers to explore, contribute to, and build on.

And the work this year has not been limited to UNO Q. Throughout this time period, we also unveiled several new products under the same ethos, ranging from the Arduino® Starter Kit R4 and Arduino® Nesso N1 to no less than eight (eight!) new Arduino® Modulino nodes. Motors, Joystick, Latch Relay, Light, LED Matrix, Vibro, Hub, and Extender may be tiny in size, but easily add so many different functionalities to your projects: you can check out the Arduino® UNO Q DIY synth bundle and Arduino® UNO Q Arcade bundle to get an idea of how well they work to bring ideas to life. Plus, Arduino Cloud got even better!

Meanwhile, Arduino Core on Zephyr reached version 1.0, moving beyond its beta phase and providing a solid RTOS foundation for Arduino boards with an MCU, including UNO Q as well as the new Arduino^® VENTUNO Q board.

Stronger together

Qualcomm is deepening its own open source commitment as well. Its business success depends on open standards, upstream collaboration, and transparent participation in the ecosystem.

A couple of months ago, we introduced VENTUNO Q, bringing substantially more computing and AI capability to Arduino developers. It opens the door to more demanding applications while keeping the development experience familiar.

A year ago, UNO Q was a new board. Today, it’s a growing platform, a new way of developing with Arduino, and, most importantly, a community of people finding out what it can do. Arduino and Qualcomm are stronger together!

A prototype is only the beginning

You can start with a prototype on UNO Q or VENTUNO Q and, as your requirements evolve, move to more advanced platforms and commercial-ready solutions while keeping the tools, models, and applications you already built. 

Beyond it, the wider Qualcomm Dragonwing family supports industrial and production-scale deployments.

The software stack follows you, too: 

• Arduino App Lab for building and packaging your application
• Edge Impulse for production-grade pipelines
• Foundries.io for secure updates and fleet management once you deploy at scale.
• Qualcomm AI Hub for optimized models

Finally, this year we also launched Works with Arduino, a program enabling partners to certify their System on Modules and developers to take apps built with UNO Q or VENTUNO Q to compatible hardware without changing a line of code. With App Lab, applications are packaged as a single App Release, making it possible to move from prototype to production in minutes, not weeks.

It is a direct bridge from prototype to commercial-ready hardware, and a path to the 33M+ Arduino developer community for partners.

And the community came together beyond the projects too. Alongside Qualcomm, we brought UNO Q to CES, MWC, and the Mission44 Workshop, meeting developers, makers, students, and industry leaders, while showing what this new generation of Arduino-powered computing can do.

^{The Arduino team at the Qualcomm booth at CES (January 2026)!}

^{Mission 44 students at Silverstone getting hands-on with UNO Q and AI-powered racing telemetry (June 2026).}

It is just the beginning

Year one showed that powerful, open, and simple can go together. It showed us what happens when you put new tools in the hands of a curious community, and let them take it somewhere you didn’t expect.

Year two is about going further: more tools, more partners, and more ways to turn an idea into something real.

Happy first birthday, UNO Q! 

And to everyone who built, shared, taught, hacked, and dreamed with it this year: thank you. The best is still ahead.

Qualcomm branded products are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. 

Arduino, Modulino, Nesso, UNO, Starter Kit, and VENTUNO, and the Arduino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

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