Arduino, the friendly little board that taught millions of people to blink an LED, has grown up. Its new Ventuno Q is a $299 board built for robots and smart cameras that can see, listen and decide on their own, without sending everything to the cloud. The first batch of pre-orders sold out fast, as OMG! Ubuntu reports.
Why it matters: “edge AI” means artificial intelligence that runs right on the device, a robot, a drone or a camera, instead of on a faraway server. It is faster, works offline and keeps data private. The Ventuno Q brings that power into the familiar Arduino world.
Two brains on one board
The clever part is that the Ventuno Q has two very different chips working as a team, according to OMG! Ubuntu and RS DesignSpark:
- The thinker: a Qualcomm Dragonwing IQ-8275 processor with eight cores, a graphics chip and an AI accelerator (an “NPU”) rated at up to 40 TOPS. TOPS means trillions of operations per second: lots of muscle for recognising faces, objects, speech and gestures.
- The reflexes: a separate STM32H5F5 microcontroller that handles real-time jobs such as driving motors precisely, with response times below a millisecond.
It is a bit like a person who can solve puzzles while their spinal cord keeps them perfectly balanced.
What else is packed in
- Memory: 16 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage, plus a slot for a fast NVMe drive.
- Connections: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3 and fast 2.5 Gb Ethernet.
- Eyes: three camera connectors on the board, and two more through an extra connector.
- Screens: HDMI and USB-C video output.
- Add-ons: a 40-pin header that works with existing Arduino and Raspberry Pi accessories, plus CAN-FD, the language of professional motor controllers and industrial machines.
- Software: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS comes preinstalled together with Arduino App Lab, which mixes classic Arduino sketches, Python and AI models in one place. Debian support is due later this year, says OMG! Ubuntu.
Who is it for?
- Robot builders and students who want a robot that recognises objects or follows voice commands.
- Makers working on smart cameras and sensors that must think on the spot.
- Not for beginners’ first project: at $299 it is far more than a classic starter board. OMG! Ubuntu stresses it is not meant as a general-purpose single-board computer either; it is a specialist tool for AI and robotics.
What happens next
Pre-orders opened in late August, and the first allocation sold out on Arduino’s own store, while some resellers list it on backorder. RS DesignSpark describes it as Arduino’s second board of this kind, after the UNO Q. If you are dreaming of a robot that can see, this is one of the most exciting new toys of the season.
Sources
- Arduino’s Ubuntu-powered $299 edge AI board just sold out – OMG! Ubuntu, September 2026
- Arduino VENTUNO Q explained: key features, specs and uses – RS DesignSpark, updated 25 August 2026
