Qualcomm acquires Arduino

[coppercone2]

is qualcomm less evil then broadcomm? Because broadcomm reputation for forced legacy product (buyout and derelict) stuff is downright sorrid

that is to buy out a mostly fine compeditor, then start charging crazy fees and stuff to basically make the small people quit and drain larger slow entities

[ataradov]

They will wreck Arduino, for sure. But it will not do anything to to AVR or PIC.

Rising prices on classic boards will not accomplish anything. There is simply no money that would be meaningful to Qualcomm that you can extract from Arduino selling legacy boards.

RPi can increase prices, but  even them can only do that so much. There is minimal, but still competition out there. I personally use Orange PI for SBCs. They are cheaper, and in many ways better.

But for Arduino there are dozens of compatible boards. Any price increase will simply move more people toward them. The only thing they can do is make IDE harder to access (hide behind subscription or even registration).

They clearly want to push their new hardware, but they are going about it in a really weird way, which is destined to fail. I would expect this whole UNO Q board to fizzle out.

[coppercone2]

I mean that when its a mess people will go back to making small PIC boards. like the bad old days. When it some how sucks to use arduino

[ataradov]

There is no way people are going back to PIC. PIC architecture sucks and C compilers for them are really weird.

People will move to Espressif parts way before they move to PICs.

And Platform I/O seems to already replace Arduino IDE for people that want IDEs. So, this is not even that big of a loss.

[croma641]

Beyond the sale to Qualcomm, which I’m not questioning at all, I’ve learned that these people were supported by an Italian state entity in 2023 for a capital increase. That doesn’t seem normal to me (at the very least for the taxpayers, me for example). Strange...

[ataradov]

They did get a lot of perks over the years. I think a lot of that was to keep making them in Italy and to support the use in educational setting. This is not that different from British government supporting BBC Micro Bit boards.

[brucehoult]

The new Arduino UNO Q "dual-brain" is the usual Lego block approach that MBA's and investors can understand somewhat.
"Qualcomm DragonWing QRB2210 SoC running Linux and an STMicro STM32U585 MCU for real-time control, as well as the Arduino App Lab integrated development environment"

Qualcomm materials say the QRB2210 is quad 64 bit Kryo cores running at up to 2.0 GHz.

Other internet sources say it's the "customised A53" version of Kryo.

While Snapdragon 820 used the A53 Kryo cores as the LITTLE cores they've never used A53 for the main application cores in phones.

[westfw]

It's not like Arduino is actively maintained (in any significant meaning).

I agree that the Arduino hardware (and core firmware) are not very "actively maintained."

The IDE gets more attention, and particularly its support of 3rd party boards and libraries is pretty close to "best in class" (except that it's not a "class" that attracts many competitors.)  Like linux, Arduino support has been a gateway for various hardware/chip vendors to attract customers.  ("It runs Arduino" is for microcontrollers very much what "it runs linux" was/is for SoC Application Processors.)  (notwithstanding that sometimes such support is ... not very good.)

And their forum is pretty much brilliant and brilliantly maintained.  My favorite, somewhat above here, and FAR better than most chip vendors' forums.

Qualcom could do a lot of damage in these areas.  :-(

[brucehoult]

"Qualcomm DragonWing QRB2210 SoC running Linux and an STMicro STM32U585 MCU for real-time control

Also the dual chips and split ISAs is likely to be a pain. How is the communications between them? And $44. Ow.

The Milk-C Duo series (CV1800B/SG200x) offers one Linux core and one microcontroller core with the same fundamental ISA (64 bit RISC-V). The Duo's microcontroller core is even supported in the Arduino IDE. For $5 (64 MB RAM) to $10 (512 MB RAM).

Also everything with a SiFive "quad core" setup (JH7110 in VisionFive 2, the new $19.90 VisionFive 2 Lite, Milk-V Mars, Orange Pi RV, PIC64GX, PolarFire SoC (e.g. BeagleV Fire)) actually has a 5th 64 bit microcontroller core as well which I believe is normally simply unused. It should be possible to do Arduino support for it, I just don't think anyone actually has.

The above things don't have an Uno-compatible GPIO connector layout -- they're usually more like a Pi or Pi Pico -- but I'm not sure that's a huge obstacle. I've built a few Uno shields myself (using Freetronics protoboards https://www.freetronics.com.au/collections/all-products/products/protoshield-basic) but I've never bought any.

[ataradov]

The selling point (from Q point of view) is not SBC functionality, but AI accelerators. And STM32 is there because Arduino people could not figure out how to make that Linux monstrosity work with their IDE and not take a minute to boot.

If you just want an SBC, there are plenty of way better options.

[PCB.Wiz]

There is massive overhead on this, and I have to chuckle at this admission: 

Microcontroller  : Real-time, low-power STM32U585 MCU to control the world around you.

All the hype about 'the edge' and they then admit for real time, real world interactions on GPIO pins, they have a MCU in the corner!

There is also this in the promo "4GB RAM variant recommended COMING SOON" - your father's MCU this is not 

The PI PICOs have more appeal for embedded modules.

[langwadt]

did they learn nothing from this failure? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Galileo

[ataradov]

Arduino did learn a lot from that, but this is a different situation. They have a new corporate daddy, and that daddy does not care, it just wants to see their devices everywhere.

And even UNO R4 happened when Renesas gave them a ton of money. It does not looks like that board is very popular or would have been done by Arduino on their own.

[RoGeorge]

I don't get it.  Why did they buy it?  What for?
Also, from whom did they buy it?

[ataradov]

I don't see financial details. It is possible that given estimated marketing budget, it was cheaper to buy Arduino and get some publicity and may be some audience. A lot of money for Arduino is pocket change for Qualcomm.

And it would be Massimo Banzi and whatever corporate entity they have registered.

[RoGeorge]

The only reasonable answer I can think of is that they were having too much money, and bought a name instead of risking that money to inflation or to other causes. 

[brucehoult]

I don't get it.  Why did they buy it?  What for?

Commodore was already taken?

Also, from whom did they buy it?

I expect the cheques will be made out to Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, David Mellis, Tom Igoe, Fabio Violante -- or rather the company they own.

[westfw]

Microcontroller  : Real-time, low-power STM32U585 MCU to control the world around you.
All the hype about 'the edge' and they then admit for real time, real world interactions on GPIO pins, they have a MCU in the corner!

The MCU runs the "Zepher" OS.  There goes a lot of potential performance. :-(

[thm_w]

https://www.arduino.cc/product-uno-q  - $44, €47

Quad core 2GHz cpu, 16GB storage, wow, as you say this is just a SBC with no ethernet or HDMI port.
Its also clear they don't understand their market at all.

Maybe thats the cheapest processor they even make so they had to find a way to shoehorn it in.

[ataradov]

I think HDMI is replaced by the full USB, which can send video. Some of their material advertise running this thing as a computer with a monitor and keyboard/mouse attached. You can then run Arduino IDE on the Linux cores and upload the sketch to the STM32.

It is still a complicated and bulky setup with no visible advantages.

[xrunner]

https://www.arduino.cc/product-uno-q  - $44, €47

Quad core 2GHz cpu, 16GB storage, wow, as you say this is just a SBC with no ethernet or HDMI port.
Its also clear they don't understand their market at all.

Maybe thats the cheapest processor they even make so they had to find a way to shoehorn it in.

Wow. 

No project I've ever made with an "Arduino" type board would need anything close to the power of that!

[johnboxall]

did they learn nothing from this failure? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Galileo

Oh my, I'd forgotten all about that. I vaguely recall that the rev 1 had an issue with the order of connecting power, if you connected USB then the 5V DC something would be damaged.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140309032149/https://tronixstuff.com/2014/02/12/review-intel-galileo-arduino-compatible-development-board/

Anyhow, back to the present.

*sigh* You can't run the Arduino App Lab environment unless a board is connected.

10/10 to the founders for finally selling out, you've gotta earn. A nice retirement isn't free.

As a retailer I ended up giving away my last Yun boards. I might have an industrial Yun laying around here somewhere. I wonder how these new boards will fare in the market?

I haven't seen any R4s doing anything interesting. My university still uses R3 clones as they're cheap and surprisingly hardy when in the hands of beginners.

Hopefully Arduino can market these things appropriately. I'm sure YouTube will be full of click-baity videos in the next week calling it the Raspberry Pi Killer or one-sided bogus comparisons or how bad it is then ending up being happy with it or somesuch.

[snarkysparky]

I always though of Arduino as an easy way for hobbyist to get into real time control  ( no OS )

It serves the IO portion of a project.

 but the UNOQ micro is running an OS.  What will be the latency cost?

Will there be deterministic IO response times ?

[sleemanj]

I think Arduino hasn't been much more than a semi-unified simple development platform to the maker community for a while, beingnused much les with actual "Arduino" and more ESP32 and RP Pico boards being the choice for ma2ny who need more than the 328p and 32u4 aliexpress boards.

In short, "Arduino" could cease to exist tomorrow, and I don't think it would really affect "makers".

Incidentally, as a seller of things, I sell a **lot** more 328P and 32U4 boards than I do esp32 and rp2040.

[EEVblog]

This has been in the works for months.
I've heard there are a lot of issues with the open source licenses...