Arudino UNO Q meets dotnet

Feb. 1, 2026 by Max Reble 0 Comments

TLDR; just want to try it

Go to my Reble.ArduinoRouter GitHub Repository and follow the instructions. You don’t need to install anything new on the Arduino UNO Q as everything we need is already installed (git, docker)

The Motivation

Arduino has a new home: Qualcomm! And thus Qualcomm has decided to bring out an Arduino which has not only a microcontroller (MCU) but also a CPU from Qualcomm (MPU) which runs a fully fledged Linux with python and docker installed. With it comes also a new built IDE from which you can build your microcontroller code in Arduino C++ and python scripts that run on the MPU. Those two can communicate via a so-called Arduino Router.

So you can for instance do some real-time analysis of a sensor in the MCU and send every 10ms or so the accumulated data of the sensor to the MPU which then implements an http server where you can have a fully fledged dashboard which is powered by the MPU. Furthermore there is also an integrated GPU in the MPU to leverage AI driven implementations, for example by interpreting accumulated data from the MCU. One example given by the Arduino IDE itself is a vibration anomaly detection which uses the MCU to get the raw sensor values, which sends the data to the backend running on the MPU which leverages the GPU to find anomalies in the vibration.

I am a dotnet developer by heart for many years. For me the travel started because I was in search of a high level programming language that works on a raspberry PIs. Lucky me: at that time dotnet core 1.0 was just released. Even though it was a little pain at the beginning I was amazed how that old, corporate-feeling .NET Framework emerged into a beautiful language which has set the standard for many other programming languages in the last ten years. With dotnet 10 it doesn’t matter if you are a Microsoft-lover, a Mac-fanboy or a linux-evangelist – you just code wherever and on which platform, for which platform you want.

So I wanted to know if we could use dotnet 10 to work with the Arduino UNO Q and in the first place replace python for the backend on the MPU.

Getting started

After I received the Arduino UNO Q by mail I opened it and plugged it into my USB-C charger for my mobile phone and hoped that it will open up a open WiFi hotspot where I can connect to. Unfortunately that is not how it works. So I did what every good developer does after trying to figure it out on my own: reading the documentation. I figured that I have to connect it via USB-C cable to my computer and then download and install the IDE. After I did the IDE told me that I should connect my Arduino UNO Q via USB-C – I did already, but the IDE was not able to find it. So I decided to install the new firmware first.

1. Update Firmware

Add female-to-female jumper to the both pins on the opposite side of the power button
download cli firmware update tool
run:

./arduino-flasher-cli flash latest

when finished disconnect from USB-C and remove the jumper

2. Install IDE

download and install Arduino App Lab
Plug UNO Q (without jumper) via USB-C
Start App Lab and select the Arduino
Go through your installation process. The Password you set will be later used to connect via ssh to the UNO Q.

3. Run first example

After update and installation process has completed you can run your first example. For understanding how the Arduino Bridge works I think a good start is the Blink LED with UI. You can select it via the App Lab, run it, and follow the instructions.

Coding with dotnet

We have many different ways how to develop with dotnet on the Uno Q. I for my self use JetBrains Rider for developing. In Rider you have the possibility to use remote debugging, but you can do it with Visual Studio or VSCode, too.

1. Setting up UNO Q

To be able to run dotnet applications on the UNO Q we have multiple ways of doing so. One would be to compile it as self-contained, which has the drawback that we would have to copy a lot of files everytime we develop. Another would be native AOT compiling or develop in a docker container that has it own drawbacks. So I decided to install the dotnet aspnetcore runtime (you don’t need the full SDK as we will compile on our development computer)

Connect to UNO Q via SSH

ssh arduino@<boardname>.local #replace <boardname> with your board name

Type yes when prompted to, and use the password you set up in your App Lab

Install dotnet runtime

wget https://dot.net/v1/dotnet-install.sh -O dotnet-install.sh
chmod +x dotnet-install.sh
sudo ./dotnet-install.sh --version latest --runtime aspnetcore --install-dir /usr/share/dotnet

after that we have to set up a folder where our app will be copied to

mkdir ~/my-dotnet-app

2. Setting up New Project with Rider on your computer

For details see Debug Remote Applications via SSH – JetBrains Documentation

Create new project in Rider (For example a new Empty Web Application with net10.0)
Open Settings (CTRL + ALT + S)
go to Build, Execution, Deployment | Deployment
Click + and click SFTP and set a name.
Click on … at SSH configuration and add new SSH configurations with the same ssh credentials you used in the previous step
For root path choose /home/arduino/my-dotnet-app (we created that folder in the step before)
add run/debug configuration
- In Menu Click Run > Edit Configurations
- Click on + and add new Publish to custom server configuration
- Choose name publish-to-arduino
- Select your arduino at Remote server
- Target Framework: net10.0
- Deployment mode: Framework-Dependent
- Target Runtime: linux-arm64
- Click OK to save
Edit your csproj and add in PropertyGroup

<PropertyGroup>
    <RuntimeIdentifiers>linux-arm64</RuntimeIdentifiers>
</PropertyGroup>

3. Start Developing

Add NuGet Package dotnet add package Reble.ArduinoRouter
Start hacking by following the documentation

Example

Switch to your Arduino App Lab and run the Blink LED with UI example.

Then replace your Program.cs with this

using Reble.ArduinoRouter;

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);
builder.Services.AddSingleton<IArduinoRouterClient, ArduinoRouterClient>();

var app = builder.Build();

bool ledState = false;
app.MapGet("/toggle", async (IArduinoRouterClient client) =>
{
    ledState = !ledState;
    await client.CallAsync("set_led_state", [ledState]);
});

app.Run();

and click on Run. This will compile, publish and transfer this app to your arduino via ssh. Now connect to your arduino via ssh:

ssh arduino@<boardname>.local
cd ~/my-dotnet-app
chmod +x WebApplication1 # replace WebApplication1 with your application name
ASPNETCORE_URLS="http://0.0.0.0:5000" ./WebApplication1

and go on your PC to this address: http://<boardname>.local:5000/toggle. Everytime you go on this link, the LED on the board will toggle! 🙂

Wrap-up and Future Plans

That’s it. Now you can make use of the Arduino Bridge to call with the microcontroller directly from dotnet. Please let me know if everything has worked for you, if you find this useful, if you have wishes for future versions and on which projects you use this library. Please use the GitHub discussions of my repository for this.

For the future I may like to take a deeper look into nanoframework or dotnet IoT to not only hijack the UNO Q’s MPU but also its MCU.

Thanks for reading,

yours Max

Monat: Februar 2026