Arduino tried putting an MCU and Linux processor on one board back in 2013 with the Arduino Yun–an ATMega MCU paired with an Atheros MIPS-based CPU running OpenWRT. The Arduino Uno Q is the spiritual successor born out of the Qualcomm acquisition of Arduino, except now it’s a Qualcomm Dragonwing ARM MPU running Debian tied to an STM-based Arduino microcontroller.

On paper? Massive upgrade. Linux on ARM has matured a lot in the 13 years since the first Raspberry Pi, and Qualcomm & Arduino (Qualduino? Arducomm?) are marketing this thing as having the “power and versatility needed for modern AI at the edge applications.” I immediately opened my wallet and pre-ordered one.

In reality, I’ve spent more time fighting this board than using it. It is absolutely death by a thousand papercuts. Any one of these issues alone would be understandable. I’m used to being an early adopter. The sheer volume of issues and instabilities, however, makes the experience pretty frustrating.

The 1st papercut: don’t expect to plug this into a USB-A port

The only thing that was in the box, paperwork aside, was the board. The first cable I grabbed was USB-C to USB-A, and the Uno Q powered up but was not detected by my PC. The docs mention this as a known issue. A USB-C to USB-C cable directly into my laptop solved the issue. Minor annoyance, but an annoyance.

The 2nd papercut: The IDE can tell you that firmware is outdated, but cannot update it

Out of the box, the IDE immediately told me that a firmware update was available. It then informed me that I need a separate CLI tool to actually perform it. This is not very integrated of a development environment if the update utility is not bundled with it. Considering the whole App Lab IDE is constantly blatantly calling terminal commands to do various things, and showing you the output… boo, shame. This is lazy.

The 3rd papercut: you have to short two pins to perform this software update, and no jumper is included

The OS update is a full Debian image north of 2 gigabytes. That’s cool. If I need to bridge two pins to update my firmware straight out of the box (and believe me, you will be eagerly awaiting patches), they should spend the 3 cents and put a shunt jumper in the box. I didn’t have any jumpers or female-to-female Dupont wires on me, so I had to use a screwdriver to bridge the pins. Annoying.

The 4th papercut: App Lab (the new IDE) is unstable

After my firmware finished flashing, the IDE itself needed some updates, which then failed. After a restart it eventually sorted itself out, but this is not confidence-inspiring. These kinds of issues happen very often. App Lab feels quite undercooked and unstable, which is a big yikes for being the centerpiece of the Uno Q experience.

The 5th papercut: The SBC side has a single traditional I/O option

Ignoring the two 60 pin combined GPIO & SPIO headers on the bottom, for which no accessories and very little documentation exists, all you get is one USB-C port. For power (Uno GPIO aside), peripherals, display, and whatever else you choose to plug in. You need a USB-C hub with all of these things.

The 6th papercut: Camera support seems poor despite touting machine vision

Not supporting either of my USB webcams does not really feel like the “versatility” needed to do AI at the edge. I’ll give it a pass for my ancient Microsoft LifeCam. However: I thought the PS3 Eye Cam’s driver was usually part of the kernel, but evidently not here. I had to build it as a kernel extension and run it that way. This did seem to work in my own Python apps, though with some weird hitching, and did not work in any of the App Lab examples.

There’s also no CSI connector on the board. They specifically advertise that the bottom SBC-side GPIO can be used for carrier boards offering things like CSI, but those carrier boards do not exist yet. I have a perfectly good CSI camera I bought for my Raspberry Pi project and I can’t use it here. I’ve ordered a CSI breakout board, so I’m going to try to figure it out and potentially make my own carrier board. Stay tuned for another post about that if I’m successful.

The 7th papercut: The board forgot it was already set up

I went back to this another day and connected to App Lab over the network from my Windows PC, only to be greeted with the first time setup that asks me to choose a wireless network. My brother in Christ, I am currently connected to you over a wireless network. A new Debian image was available, so I did another firmware update and got it out of its funk. I don’t know how I would have fixed it otherwise. Now I have to reinstall my PS Eye webcam drivers because it wiped all my data, but oh well. It did warn me.

The 8th – 1000th papercuts: Every time App Lab doesn’t do what it’s supposed to and/or fails an update

Overall, this is really awesome hardware. ARM Linux + an Arduino MCU on one board is a great idea. I don’t regret this purchase at all. I don’t really have anything positive to say about it yet other than the concept is cool. I love everything they’re trying to do.

App Lab is the centerpiece of this experience and it just feels rushed. It feels like early access software. If you think you would like to buy an Uno Q and already have Arduino & Raspberry Pi / Linux experience separately, go for it and see what you can make with it. If you are new to Arduino and/or single-board computers, go with something more common and learn the ropes first, because right now with the Uno Q you might spend more time fiddling than actually learning.

I haven’t given up, though. Hopefully I have something to demonstrate in another post here soon.