New Ventuno Q Dual Brain Single Board Computer

Arduino announced a new “Dual Brain” Single Board Computer (SBC) they are calling the VENTUNO Q.

I have to say – it looks pretty amazing.

If you have been following Arduino’s releases lately, you’ll know the dust hasn’t even settled yet on their recent foray into SBC’s with the advent of the Arduino UNO Q and their new Arduino AppLab IDE.

What’s fascinating about the new line of SBCs is they are “Dual-Brain” – that is, they have taken a traditional SBC and merged it with a traditional Arduino Development Board.

All the stuff you can do with a traditional Arduino development board, you can do with Arduino’s new line of SBC – but you also have the full power, versatility of a general purpose computer!

What stands out with this new Arduino VENTUNO Q is the Neural Processing Unit that handles up to 40 TOPS – that’s 40 trillion mathematical operations per second.

Pair that with 16GB of RAM and 64GB of flash memory.

What this means for you practically is that you’ll be able to run LLMs locally on this board.
No more making API calls to cloud LLMs! You’ll have a brain in a box.

And the brain will have a friend – it’s the MCU that can easily read sensors and control all types of stuff like motors, LEDs or whatever.

Just like the Arduino UNO Q, the VENTUNO Q can be programmed with Arduino AppLab.

A case for Arduino AppLab

I want to make a case for Arduino AppLab, and why I think it’s a great tool for programming the new Dual Brain SBC’s.

First think about the traditional Arduino ecosystem…

You have Arduino Development Boards – they made connecting things to microcontrollers easier
You have the Arduino IDE – made uploading code to microcontrollers easier
You have Arduino “Language” and Arduino Libraries – made programming microcontrollers easier

If you get rid of any one of those elements of the traditional Arduino ecosystem, the stool falls.

Now consider these new Arduino Dual Brain single board computers…

• You have the Dual Brain SBCs themselves – combine an MPU and MCU
• You have Arduino AppLab IDE – make programming the MPU and MCU easy
• You have Bricks and the Bridge library – make using AI models easy and allow your MPU and MCU to talk with each other.

Arduino AppLab is free and open source, it is being actively developed, and I have seen in real time how the platform has been improving.

VENTUNO Q Specifications and Features

So let’s talk more about some of the VENTUNO specifications:

The Microprocessor (MPU) is a Qualcomm Dragonwing IQ8:

• CPU: Octa-core Arm Cortex
• Adreno GPU/VPU: Arm Cortex A623 at 877 MHz
• Hexagon Tensor AI Processor (NPU): up to 40 dense TOPS
• Qualcomm Spectra 692 ISP (Image Signal Processor)
• 16GB RAM
• 64GB Flash Storage (plus an expansion slot where you can add more memory)
• Run Ubuntu, or Debian Linux OS

The Microcontroller (MCU) is an STM32H5F5:

• Arm Cortex M33 at 250MHz
• 4MB flash
• 1.5MB RAM
• Arduino core on Zephyr RTOS

The VENTUNO also has a ton of ports!

• 3x MIPI CSI connectors
• 1 x USB-C
• HDMI
• 2 x USB 3 Type A connectors
• Ethernet connector
• QWIIC

Plus, it has the standard 40-pin GPIO header which provides full electrical and mechanical compatibility with Raspberry Pi accessories. You’ll have access to the entire Rpi hardware accessory ecosystem.

And of course it has WiFi and BLE…

All this, not to mention it has the traditional Arduino UNO header footprint that can be controlled with the MCU.

All the fun GPIO stuff you can do with any old Arduino board can also be done on the VENTUNO Q.

And it has an 8 by 13 LED matrix – you know, just for kicks.

If you want to learn how to use Arduino AppLab, see how Bricks work, and understand the details of the Bridge library that allows the MPU and MCU to talk then check out this link right here to hop on the waitlist for a training series that I am putting together.

Now if you have been watching thus far, but you’re not sure what an SBC is, or a traditional Arduino board, then let me clear that real quick…

What is a Single Board Computer?

First, what is a Single Board Computer (SBC) – like a Raspberry Pi?

Imagine if you took your laptop, or desktop computer – pulled out all the guts, and then compressed it onto a single PCB – voilà! → you have yourself an SBC.

Single Board Computers do everything you would think normal computers do. They have operating systems, run a bunch of different programs, and handle peripherals like a computer monitor, keyboard and mouse.

It’s just a computer…on a single board. (Finally, a technical name that makes sense!)

The brain of a single board computer is often a System on Chip – which combines a CPU and other processors into a single piece of silicon.

What SBC’s don’t do quite as effectively is handle General Purpose Input Output (GPIO).

That is where microcontrollers really shine.

What is a Microcontroller Development Board?

Traditional Arduino boards are microcontroller development boards. A microcontroller is like a really tiny computer that can run a single program – they are the brains of traditional Arduino boards.

The basic use of microcontroller is this:

Input → logic → Output

The input can be things like sensors (Temperature, Pressure, User Inputs etc).

The output can be things like motors, displays, LEDs, etc.

The logic in between is where you can say things like, if a sensor value above a threshold, then turn a fan on.

Traditional Arduino boards excel at reading and controlling all types of sensors and actuators!
Dual Brain SBCs are like TexMex for Arduino
Hopefully you can see now how merging the capability of SBC with a microcontroller development board has real promise.

With the addition of Arduino AppLab, you have a unified place to write programs that utilise the MPU and the MCU. The software bricks that come pre-loaded with AppLab, allow you to quickly and easily invoke complex AI models.

It’s a brave new paradigm!

If you’re excited to learn more about practically using these boards, check out this link, to get on the waiting list for a training program I am putting together right now.