Aeduino UNO Q first impressions

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I attended a talk by David Cuartielles at the Universitat Politècnica de València, where he discussed bio-degradable PCBs. I was lucky that David gave me one of the new UNO Q boards. I couldn't wait to try this beast out, but I faced some initial trouble. 

You can handle the UNO Q board from your computer using either the standalone Arduino App Lab you can download for free, or you can use the Arduino Cloud service on the web. The latter requires you to download the Arduino Cloud Agent, which bridges the Cloud service with USB communication. 

The board retains the venerable form factor of the Arduino UNO, although it no longer features a barrel power connector. The board is powered by the USB-C port. Similar to previous boards, such as the Intel Galileo, it features two processors: one handles real-time I/O with an STM32U585, and the other runs Linux Debian with a Qualcomm Dragonwing (QRB2210). A significant amount of power is packed into a compact board. The recommended power supply is a 5V@3A phone charger. I have it running smoothly from the USB-C port of my M1 MacBook Pro as well. However, be aware that a regular USB-A port is typically limited to 5V at 500mA.

First steps

As you connect the board to your computer you will be greeted with a message like this:
So you go ahead and upgrade:
And when you try to connect, it may take a while to detect your board:

It appears that the inner workings of the board require around 15 seconds for it to be detected in my computer once I plug it in. Once you have configured the WiFi network, you may be offered two different ways to connect to your board:

And with WiFi networking enabled, you can also SSH to your board using ssh arduino@kakalina.local (or whatever other name your board has .local, or just using the board's IP address and the password you provided to the board,  which should not be confused with your WiFi password).

The shocking test

Once all is working ok, and if you have a USB docking station dongle (apparently not the Apple one) with HDMI and USB ports, you can connect it to the USB port of the board and power the whole contraption with a cellphone charger. Connecting a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse, you will have a desktop computer not very different from what you'd have with a Raspberry Pi, with a built-in Arduino IDE, which in this case is self-hosted. The 2 GB of RAM may be less than that of other boards, but it does the job. And the WiFi provides the networking you may need. Remember, you also have a second processor for running your sketch, and both systems may exchange data too, so things like logging data on analog inputs and storing it in a database on the 16 GB eMMC storage are possible, or writing to an external SD connected to the docking dongle.

The trouble

I had several problems, as the board was not always recognized, which I attribute to the USB-C cable I was using. However, some of these issues may also have been due to the fact that the board is not recognized immediately, but rather requires a good 10-15 seconds to be detected, and I might have rushed it at times.  Anyway, I was able to reflash it using the Arduino Flasher CLI (by placing the corresponding jumper on the JCTL header).

I was a bit disappointed that the Blink example didn't work immediately, but it was okay. It just took much longer to start working than I had expected. It seems the complexity involved is light-years away from the ATmega's Arduinos, so certain things now take longer. 

To demonstrate the potential of this new platform, the Blink LED with UI example enables you to control the LED through a web GUI. That is really cool.

The new LED matrix

Compared to the UNO R4, the UNO Q has a denser LED matrix, they are blue in this case case and they can be dimmed, so it looks better than before, and they will not "burn" a pattern in your retina :-) 

Conclusion

It will take me a while to explore all the potential applications of this board, but so far, I am impressed by the numerous capabilities it offers (built-in Bluetooth, too). I can definitely see airport panels or info kiosks built with just the UNO Q board and a sub-$10 docking station. 

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