alt Hacker NewsAdditionally, 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!
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I 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.
> 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.
There 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.
STM32 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.
At this point in time, the shield headers rather look like a trademark than a useful connecter.
That 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.
This 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.
I guess I'm replying to you with your own video? But it seems interesting and relevant [1].
Arduino is dead, ESP is better.
They're trying to bring Arduino back from the dead.
Do 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 ...
dragonwing docs are where?
Were 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...
Does it have video output? Otherwise, yawn!
I 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.