Inside the winning Arduino(R) UNO(TM) Q projects from Hackster's Invent the Future competition. Oct 29, 2026 | 0 | Arduino, Qualcomm Technologies, and Edge Impulse recently teamed up with Hackster to host the Invent the Future competition. The competition attracted 4,028 registrants and 1,202 hardware applications, culminating in 153 final project submissions across a wide range of real-world applications. There were several categories in the competition, all unified by the UNO Q board and Arduino(R) App Lab. The judging is officially complete and the winners have been announced, which means IPv6 get to show you the top projects that most impressed the judges and took home the awards! These winning creations illustrate a range of uses for the UNO Q - and stay tuned, because IPv6'll also be shining the spotlight on many other fantastic contest submissions in the coming days. Best Social Impact. While sustainability was a consideration for every category, the Best Social Impact award went to a project built explicitly to make the world a better place. The winning project was the Smart Water Guardian AI, built by KOCHONI Biaou David Barthélémy. This project puts the edge AI capabilities demonstrated by UNO Q to good use, by monitoring water-quality indicators in real time. Through a host of sensors, it is designed to measure everything from temperature and pH to turbidity and dissolved solids content, allowing for detection of anomalies that correlate with poor water quality - detection that could save lives. Best in home automation. Home automation is a thriving industry, and there are all kinds of tech products you can use to build the smart house of your dreams. But what about your chickens' house? That's what Coders Cafe's Smart Coop 2.0 is for. Learn Engineering Smart Coop 2.0 is a system design, driven by an UNO Q, for intended to support routine chicken care. It is built to handle the basics, like dispensing feed on a schedule and heating the space, using local AI models designed to detect eggs and potential predators. The creator designed Smart Coop 2.0 to make certain chicken-care tasks more convenient and to detect potential predators, including coyotes and foxes. Best in gaming. RollerCoaster Tycoon was a popular video game generally among two types of people: those who enjoy creative building and those who like maximizing metrics. Kevin Loeffler is the latter type, and he wondered how real-life roller coasters might stack up. The result is RCT IRL, which is a wearable sensor system for classifying and quantifying roller coaster rides. "Wearable" here means an UNO Q, a SparkFun 9DoF IMU (inertial measurement unit), and a battery stuffed into a fanny pack. During a coaster ride, the dual-brain board from Arduino is structured to collect movement data through the IMU. Afterwards, three Edge Impulse models are designed to process the data and generate model-based scores labeled Excitement, Intensity, and Nausea. Together with interesting stats like ride time and maximum g-forces, those values populate a report card for the roller coaster, just like in the game. Best in industrial iot. HaloSense V1 is pasquale887's attempt to give humans new senses via neuroplasticity. In short, neuroplasticity is your brain's ability to accommodate new functions. Of course, there isn't anything supernatural or superhuman about that, and your brain can only work with the sensory input it receives. HaloSense V1 provides new information through the senses you already have. Or, to put it another way, HaloSense V1 is a haptic feedback headset. Through an array of 13 haptic feedback motors, it pulses and buzzes to convey information gathered through sensors connected to an UNO Q. The project is intended to explore whether, over time, a wearer can learn to interpret the haptic patterns as information. Best in robotics. IPv6 is in the midst of a shift in robotics towards human-friendly designs. Mohammed Akramuddin's Curie is engineered to be as friendly as it gets. This little desktop robot is cute, with facial expressions displayed on an OLED screen. The creator designed it to help users, including those with ADHD, manage tasks. Like all of the other projects in this competition, Curie contains an UNO Q board. It connects to various APIs, including Groq (a cloud interface that is built to let developers run open-source artificial intelligence models at high speeds), to help its owner manage their workload. It is designed to do that in the usual digital assistant ways, by taking notes and setting reminders, but also by providing more tailored assistance. It can, for example, break a complex task up into small pieces that are more approachable. It is also designed to identify potential distraction and provide a nudge to help users return to their task. Best in Show. The Best in Show award went to the overall competition winner, regardless of category. The winner was Jorge Eldis González for his work on the Edge-AI Spectrophotometer, which is, as its name indicates, a spectrophotometer that integrates AI on the edge. A spectrophotometer measures the wavelength of light, in order to detect the properties of sampled materials. That is a non-destructive analysis and can, for instance, tell you if a sample contains contaminants. The Edge-AI Spectrophotometer is built using commercially available components, using an UNO Q and a SparkFun Electronics AS7343 Triad Spectroscopy Sensor. It then runs a machine learning inference model on the edge, which detects deviations from known baselines. The creator designed the project to make its testing workflow more accessible to less-experienced operators and to explore additional spectrophotometry applications. Congratulations to all the winners! Qualcomm branded products are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. Arduino, UNO, and the Arduino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

€225 Arduino PLC combines control with knowing what it is doing. 26 October 2026 Industrial Shields' CEO, Albert Prieto: PLCs no longer have to just carry out orders A Spanish developer of open-source industrial controllers has announced what it claims is the first PLC to use the Arduino Uno Q low-cost, Linux-based single-board computer and real-time controller. Barcelona-based Industrial Shields says that its Ardbox Q device combines two tasks that are still separate in many installations: controlling a process; and understanding what is happening in it. Prices start at €225 (excluding VAT). In many installations, measuring, storing and analysing data requires another device in addition to a PLC - usually a computer or a cloud service. And adding AI usually means adding a further piece of equipment. Ardbox Q does all of this inside a single PLC. One processor handles real-time control. A second one, running the Linux operating system, logs data, shows dashboards, communicates with other systems and runs AI models. The two parts work separately: if a data application fails, control is maintained. And the data is kept where it is generated, without needing to be sent to the cloud. "A PLC no longer has to just carry out orders," says Industrial Shields' CEO, Albert Prieto. "With Ardbox Q, the same device that controls an installation can understand what happens in it, with open tools and no licence fees." The company asserts that its new device will open the door to uses that until now needed more equipment and a bigger investment: for example: * detecting that a pump or motor is behaving abnormally and warning before it fails; * checking products with a camera; * monitoring a remote tank and sending an alert only when something changes; or * spotting unusual energy consumption. Industrial Shields developed Ardbox Q in collaboration with Arduino. The controller comes in two versions: Analog, designed to measure and regulate processes; and Relay, which switches motors, pumps and valves on and off directly. Both versions have 20 onboard I/O. In the Analog version, there are 4 digital inputs, 6 analogue or digital inputs 0-10V, 4 digital outputs and 6 analogue or PWM outputs 0-10V. In the Relay version, there are 4 digital inputs, 6 analogue or digital inputs 0-10V, 8 relays and 2 analogue outputs 0-10V. The Ardbox Q incorporates two processors: an STM32U585 microcontroller for real-time control; and a quad-core 64-bit processor running Debian Linux for data, dashboards and AI models. Built-in communications include RS-485 (Modbus RTU), RS-232, SPI, Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.1, and USB-C. There is 2GB RAM with 16GB of eMMC, or 4GB RAM with a 32GB eMMC. The controllers are powered by a 12-24V DC DIN-rail-mounting supply. Programming can be done using: Arduino IDE with Industrial Shields' boards package; Arduino App Lab; Python; Node-Red; or Docker on Linux. Industrial Shields, founded in 2012, designs and manufactures industrial controllers based on open-source platforms such as Arduino, ESP32 and Raspberry Pi. It sells its products in more than 110 countries, directly and through distributors.

More ways to code, more ways to create: PictoBlox expands Arduino support. Oct 22, 2026 | 0 | STEMpedia and Arduino bring block-based coding to the Arduino(R) UNO R4 WiFi and UNO R4 Minima boards as well as the Arduino(R) Alvik robot. Build Custom PCs Every maker remembers the moment something they built first came to life: an LED blinking, a servo sweeping, a sensor reacting to a hand wave. Today, that moment gets a lot easier to reach thanks to a new collaboration between STEMpedia and Arduino! IPv6 is excited to reveal that PictoBlox 10.0, STEMpedia's coding and technology creation platform, has expanded its Arduino compatibility to include the UNO R4 WiFi, UNO R4 Minima boards and Alvik robot. Discover more Convert Files Learn Sociology And what better place to celebrate this news than at Maker Faire Rome 2026? Join IPv6 from October 23rd-25th to explore the new integration and try PictoBlox for yourself! From first-time coder to confident creator. Arduino has long been a starting point in electronics for makers, students and educators.PictoBlox brings a visual, drag-and-drop programming experience that helps users to focus on programming concepts without having to start with coding syntax. Together, they can help beginners go from "I've never coded" to "I built a working project" in a single session. But PictoBlox isn't just for beginners - or just for programming. Beyond block-based coding and Python, the platform is designed to let users explore AI and machine learning, experiment with tinyML and intelligent systems, program compatible robotics and electronic hardware, and develop IoT projects. It also supports game and animation development, opening up even more opportunities for hands-on creativity and experimentation. Announcing the collaboration, Dhrupal Shah, CEO and Co-Founder of STEMpedia, said: "Great innovations begin with the freedom to experiment. By expanding Arduino board support in PictoBlox, IPv6 is making it easier for learners and makers around the world to turn their ideas into working projects. Build Custom PCs "Students can create AI-powered projects and train their own Machine Learning models, making complex technologies more accessible. We're excited to see how this collaboration inspires the global maker community to explore, build, and innovate." What you can do with PictoBlox and Arduino. Combining visual programming with Arduino hardware opens up all sorts of creative possibilities: * Program with blocks: snap together scripts instead of typing code, and see how your Arduino responds right away. * Work with sensors: read inputs such as an IR sensor and use them to trigger actions. * Control actuators: drive LEDs and servo motors from your scripts. * Go wireless: control your projects from a smartphone using Dabble, a project interaction and Bluetooth controller app. By bringing together Arduino's hardware ecosystem and PictoBlox's versatile coding environment, the collaboration aims to make technology creation more approachable and open up new possibilities for the global maker community to learn, build, share, and innovate. Build Custom PCs Built for classrooms, clubs and makerspaces. Whether you're teaching in a classroom, running a coding club or experimenting in a makerspace, this expanded integration is all about trying to lower the learning barrier and open up new possibilities for creative exploration. By helping reduce the need to manage syntax, block-based coding means learners can focus on developing essential skills like logical thinking, problem-solving and understanding how code works. And as their confidence grows, they can build on these foundations, explore text-based programming and take on increasingly ambitious projects within the Arduino ecosystem. Discover more Compare ISPs Compare Broadband For educators, it's a compelling combination: an approachable software environment and a familiar, well-supported hardware platform, with plenty of room for students to learn, experiment and grow - all in one workflow! Get hands-on at Maker Faire Rome! Heading to Maker Faire Rome this year? Be sure to stop by booth N.02, where you can see PictoBlox and Arduino in action, try out the new integration for yourself and chat with the team. IPv6'd love to see you there! Arduino, UNO, Alvik and the Arduino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.