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Additionally, they're launching their first joint product, the $44 Uno Q SBC, which has a Dragonwing SoC and STM32 microcontroller on an Uno form factor board[1
by geerlingguy 1y ago
Additionally, they're launching their first joint product, the $44 Uno Q SBC, which has a Dragonwing SoC and STM32 microcontroller on an Uno form factor board[1].
It seems like Arduino will keep their brand, maintain their existing product lines, and continue building devices using other vendor's chips (besides Qualcomm), etc... but as with all acquisitions—I wonder how long that state of affairs will last.
Alternatives like the Pi RP2040/2350 and Espressif's vast selection of boards can fill the gaps, but Arduino was what got me and many people I know into microcontrollers, so I have a special fondness for them!
[1] https://www.arduino.cc/product-uno-q https://www.arduino.cc/product-uno-q
- c0balt 1y agoThis board has onboard EMMC, wifi/ble and can run a full Linux. That is more of an rp 4/5 with an rp2xxx tagged on the side. It comes with their own arduino IDE installed too It is kinda disappointing but I can see why Qualcomm wants to use the brand.
- geerlingguy 1y agoI'm speaking in a broader sense, comparing the variety of other Arduino boards like the Uno R3/R4. That wasn't too clear in the OP, sorry! The concern I have with the $44 Q is it has 2GB of RAM and 16GB eMMC, and a processor that's probably between a Pi 3 and Pi 4 in terms of speed and IO (though 4nm, so probably much more efficient). For $45 I can buy a Pi 5 with it's own built-in GPIO, PCIe, and a much faster SoC, though it lacks a few niceties like the Q form factor, the more efficient SoC, a realtime microcontroller, and a USB-C port with display out capabilities (I really wish Pi had that...).
- kcb 1y agoShame to still see newly released products using a 13 year old core design. How has there been such little progress on low power ARM cores that it still makes sense to build a Cortex-A53 based soc on a modern node.
- antonvs 1y agoThere’s been plenty of progress. There’ve been three newer generations since the A53: the A55, then the A510, then the A520. But what you think of as an old core design is in fact a mature, well-understood, well-tested, widely-supported, cost-effective core design. It also has some features such as in-order execution which none of the newer chips have. From an engineering perspective, it still can make a lot of sense in the right applications today.
- phoehne 1y agoTo me the benefits of an MCU have to do with latency on things like interrupts. A real OS sometimes gets in the way, if you're trying to run things on very tight timing, or want to go super low power. That's why even though I'm drowning in under-used Pis, I'm using Picos to drive the lights I'm making. (Trying to coordinate multiple 3w RGB LED floods with < 10ms of latency for fancy lighting effects - because as a maker - I can do it for as little as 10 times the cost of buying it). Also, I would rather release the magic blue smoke out of a $5 Pico than a $40+ RPi. Although the Zeros were nice. We should have another round of zeros.
- cyberax 1y agoThere are some advantages to Arduino. Like <100ms boot times, you can go from power on to running within a blink of an eye. This _is_ possible with Linux, but not at all trivial and likely impossible with general-purpose distros. Interrupt handling and (on RP2040) dedicated multicore code is also nice.
- arjvik 1y agoCurious - how does one achieve this in Linux? I assume initramfs-only with special purpose pid0 and only the modules needed statically compiled into the kernel? What else would it take?
- cyberax 1y agoThe main slowdowns will likely come from device initialization and the bootloader. Bootloaders need to initialize most of the devices and load the kernel image. Then they hand the control over to Linux which proceeds to re-init these devices again. The userspace matters, but on recent computers it doesn't matter that much. You can get to sub-40ms with https://katacontainers.io/ https://katacontainers.io/ That's a project that uses full VMs to run Docker images boot instead of kernel namespacing.
- mrheosuper 1y ago100ms boottime is very high, in theory they should have near instant boottime(placing application code right at reset vector)
- my123 1y agoThe GPU on the RPi is a _lot_ slower
- ACCount37 1y agoYes, this new board is more of a Raspberry Pi replacement than an Arduino Uno replacement. More specifically, I can see it trying to compete with things like those funny Chinese boards built around SoCs like SG2000. Those embed a Linux capable core, a small NPU, a camera interface with ISP and video codecs, and a secondary RTOS core for realtime control. Basically built for drones and simple robots. The caveat of those boards being: the documentations sucks, the SDK is wack, you get 3 example scripts and are entirely on your own outside that. Qualcomm could be trying to branch into drones/robotics/etc with this move.
- joezydeco 1y agoBecause Jetson is getting traction?
- nic547 1y agoSTM32 MCUs are 3V3, not 5V right? Arduino really isn't great with naming, a Uno can be an AVR or ARM based board, now either 3V3 or 5V based and also a SBC rather than just a MCU.
- geerlingguy 1y agoI think to Arduino, Uno just means 'Uno form factor, with shield pins in the same place'
- chimpontherun 1y agoWhich is kind of sad, since the Uno pinout is horrible for high-speed signals
- geerlingguy 1y agoFYI the new Q has two 'high speed connectors' on the bottom side, for signals like CSI, HDMI, USB 3.1, etc. Haven't seen any examples of bottom 'high speed' shields yet, though. They said there would be some made available.
- chimpontherun 1y agoWell, if all the interesting signals are on the mezzanine, what's the point of the Arduino form factor and pinout? Just to claim that they're supporting a widely used platform? Engineers can see through it. The more I look at it, the more it sounds like a platform designed by M&A team
- the__alchemist 1y agoDepends on the MCU, but generally STM32 is 1.7-3.6V
- 0x457 1y agoSTM32 is 3v3 logic.
- dotancohen 1y agoThat is quite some board! Arduino has certainly progressed, I'm still playing around with R3 boards and ATMega chips. Other than the form factor, this looks like not only a completely different class of product, but a completely different hobby or business.
- r4ge 1y agoATmega micros are still incredibly useful and the Arduino ecosystem (especially the open source libraries, thanks Rob Tillaart!) makes it so easy to whip up a firmware. I really hope no matter what happens Arduino doesn't go off the rails.
- phoronixrly 1y agoWere you paid to make this comment? As a youtuber, are you partnering with Qualcomm or Arduino and are you positioning their brands and products? Edit: I see you already have a video out about the acquisition that looks a lot like an ad as well...
- geerlingguy 1y agoNo, and also no.
- wyldfire 1y agoI guess I'm replying to you with your own video? But it seems interesting and relevant [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfKX616-nsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfKX616-nsE
- arjvik 1y agoAlmost a “do you know who I am?” moment :)
- HeyLaughingBoy 1y agoDoes it have video output? Otherwise, yawn!
- kirito1337 1y agoArduino is dead, ESP is better. They're trying to bring Arduino back from the dead.
- isodev 1y agoThere is also the change of location here. In normal times, it wouldn’t matter where in the world a company is based but moving “entirely to the US” is just not a good look these days.
- kenmacd 1y agoIt is rather unfortunate. I haven't seen them mention moving manufacturing or their 'Arduino offices' (have you?), but even still I'd rather not support a country threatening to annex my homeland.
- ACCount37 1y agoI checked: there are board schematics for Uno Q there - but no datasheets or SDK or manuals or any documentation whatsoever for the QRB2210 SoC itself. Yep, it's Qualcomm alright.
- geerlingguy 1y agoTake it with a grain of salt, but the rep I've been in contact with said they'd be releasing more on the SoC...
- ACCount37 1y agoHere's hoping. Qualcomm hardware would be fun to play with if it wasn't attached to, you know. The rest of Qualcomm.
- nrclark 1y agoIf I had a dollar for every time a Qualcomm rep promised me something that never actually happened, I'd be a hundredaire.
- numpad0 1y agoWait, does that mean QXDM/QPST on Western Internet without complimentary malware?
- phoronixrly 1y agoGenuine Qualcomm! And u/geerlingguy already has a youtube video up promoting the new SoCs...
- cpldcpu 1y agoAt this point in time, the shield headers rather look like a trademark than a useful connecter.
- bfrog 1y agodragonwing docs are where?
- schappim 1y agoThis reminds me of the Arduino Intel Galileo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Galileo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Galileo
- chimpontherun 1y agoor Samsung Artik. Went nowhere in a hurry
- korhojoa 1y agoThis was cool but the software support from intel was terrible.
- schappim 1y agoEarly versions crashed when I was demoing blinking an LED.
- jajuuka 1y agoI don't think Qualcomm bought them to destroy them. I think they see Arduino as a gateway. Instead of hoping students will learn ARM it's more reasonable to leverage Arduino's simple nature to act as an on-ramp for more low level developers. I wouldn't be surprised if Arduino IDE saw a revamp to better support jumping the gap between the Arduino to Snapdragon. ST and TI do the same thing with their boards too and it's not a bad strategy.
- pclmulqdq 1y agoPeople are making so much of this when it seems so much simpler. Qualcomm likes buying high-margin businesses, and Arduino is a high-margin business. Gross margin on their boards is over 90% (hence why you can buy a Chinese clone of a $30 board for $3) and this trend shows no signs of slowing down. The TI equivalent of the $30 Arduino Uno is $5, and it's a true gateway product.
- Romario77 1y agoclone relies on hardware being designed and software written - this takes a lot of money, so you can't just count the final price of parts as the price. Arduino is open sourced in hard and software which allows this cheap cloning to exist. It also helps a lot with software and docs, which makes it cheaper for them.
- pclmulqdq 1y agoA competent engineer designing a devkit as simple as an arduino needs about 1 day of work. Give it a week to include debugging. Amortize that cost over a million units and engineering time comes out to less than one cent per board.
- shadowpho 1y agoIt’s not quite that easy, and besides the hard part is the SW. arduino spent years writing SW code and still does to make it easy to run, debug issues and provide support. Also a million dev kits is unrealistic for vast majority of companies 5-20k is more the number I hard.
- whatever1 1y ago> Alternatives like the Pi RP2040/2350 and Espressif's vast selection of boards can fill the gaps, but Arduino was what got me and many people I know into microcontrollers, so I have a special fondness for them! Exactly. For the people who did not follow a structured educational program on embedded programming, starting with an SMT microcontroller was very hard. Arduino made this fun and easy with their language & IDE combo. Typing some code and seeing the lights on the board reacting is a hell of a drug. Once you mastered the IDE, you could either program other microcontrollers in the same IDE, or at some point you hit the limits and started digging into the vendor-specific toolchains. If I started again today, I would again start with an Arduino.
- saidinesh5 1y agoDo you happen to know how good the Linux environment is on the Dragonwing SoC. I think their slides say Debian, but didn't mention what binary blobs one needs to have for enabling various functionality the SoC provides / how much their kernel deviates from mainline kernel ...