Qoitech publishes Kevin Leon’s analysis of ESP32-C6 power consumption using various development environments.

Microcontrollers such as the ESP32-C6, featuring a modern RISC-V architecture and advanced wireless capabilities (Wi-Fi 6, Thread, BLE), are increasingly deployed in edge-computing scenarios where battery replacement is impractical. While hardware efficiency is frequently prioritized during the design phase, the software abstraction layer provided by the SDK plays a critical role in the final energy footprint of a device

The results show that the software abstraction layer heavily dictates energy efficiency. ESP-IDF is the definitive leader in stability and low power out-of-the-box. Arduino offers excellent active efficiency but requires cautious coding to avoid hidden background consumption and stack instability. Zephyr RTOS is the most power-hungry of the three, trading milliamperes for multi-platform architectural elegance.

Read the full analysis in the post here.

We are thrilled to announce the release of version 0.90.0 of the ArduinoCore-zephyr. This is a major milestone: we are officially exiting the beta phase and marking the core as stable. Achieving this goal is the culmination of months of testing, architectural refinement, and community feedback.

As we establish this core as our primary framework for advanced hardware, we are also beginning the deprecation phase for the corresponding legacy cores based on mbedOS, which has just now reached End of Life status.

Join us in this next chapter! Compile your existing sketches with version 0.90.0, and let us know how it performs.

Expanded board and hardware support

Welcome, Nano RP2040 Connect! The Arduino^® Nano RP2040 Connect board officially joins our lineup. You can now leverage the full RTOS power of Zephyr on RP2040 hardware with standard Arduino API compatibility.

SD card support for the Arduino^® Portenta H7 and C33 boards. Native SD card support is now enabled for both Portenta H7 and Portenta C33, making it simple to log data and host local files on external memory.

PDM library support. Official support for the PDM library on the Nano 33 BLE board is here, unlocking digital microphone input for audio sampling, noise detection, and edge AI voice processing.

Universal automatic loader sync

With version 0.90.0, automatic loader-and-sketch synchronization is now enabled across all supported boards. The core automatically verifies and handles loader updates behind the scenes during every sketch upload. This means you can simply open the Arduino^® IDE, connect a board running a sketch based on mbedOS, switch to the new Zephyr-based core, and upload your sketch. The IDE will automatically update the loader as needed to ensure compatibility with Zephyr.

If you are running Zephyr for the first time, check out our step-by-step guide here.

Full hardware compatibility list

• Arduino^® UNO Q board
• Portenta H7
• Portenta C33
• Arduino^® Opta microPLC
• Arduino^® GIGA R1 WiFi board
• Nano Matter board
• Nano RP2040 Connect (New!)
• Nano 33 BLE
• Arduino^® Nicla Sense ME module
• Nicla Vision module

How to get started

To update your environment: open the Arduino IDE, search for “zephyr” in the Board Manager, and install version 0.90.0.

Thank you!

This stable milestone wouldn’t be possible without our community. Check out the full release notes on GitHub, report issues, and help us build the next era of Arduino on Zephyr!

Arduino, GIGA R1, Nano, Nicla, Opta, Portenta, and UNO are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

The post Arduino Core on Zephyr 0.90.0 is officially stable and leaving beta appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Sometimes, the most exciting projects we come across don’t come from well-funded labs or established companies – but rather from teenagers in a workshop, figuring things out because they genuinely want to solve something real.

That’s exactly the energy behind Yadro Team – an eight-member robotics group based in Uzbekistan, most of them under 20, founded in 2024 by Aziz Sayitkulov, who was all of 18 years old when he started it. Aziz has been doing robotics for six years, and beyond leading the team he also teaches Arduino and robotics to other students. Because when you find something that changes the way you see the world, why not share it?

Before we get to their current project, it’s worth mentioning what first put Yadro Team on our radar: a pair of smart glasses for visually impaired people, built by team member Mukhammad Shukur. The project made its way to Instagram and racked up millions of views. 

Water Saver Pro: smarter water, one sensor at a time

Yadro Team is currently focusing on a project initiated by team member Farrukh Nurliboyev: Water Saver Pro, a device that helps people understand and reduce how much water they’re using. The prototype is about 90% complete and built around an Arduino^® Nano ESP32 programmed with the Arduino^® IDE, paired with water flow sensors, Firebase cloud storage, and a Telegram notification system that sends real-time alerts. A mobile app is in development, and the team has plans to add AI-powered features down the line.

It’s a genuinely useful idea – the kind of project that starts as a prototype and could, with the right momentum, end up making a real difference in how people manage a resource that most of us take for granted. The team clearly thinks it has legs too: Water Saver Pro recently advanced to the next stage at StartupFest Uzbekistan, one of the country’s leading innovation and startup events.

Why we love this

Four years of working with Arduino. Competitions, startup challenges, innovation events. A team leader who teaches what he knows to the next wave of students. A project that already has millions of people paying attention, and another one that’s advancing through a national startup competition.

Yadro Team is proof that curiosity, determination, and the right tools – even in the hands of teenagers – can produce work that deserves serious attention. We’re rooting for them, and we can’t wait to see what comes next. 

Arduino, Nano, and the Arduino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

The post Meet Yadro Team: young robotics inventors from Uzbekistan, building tech that matters appeared first on Arduino Blog.

The ability to write Python on microcontrollers with the likes of MicroPython and later CiruitPython has made them much more accessible. [MakerClassCZ] brings that to game development with PicoGame.

Like any good project, it starts with a problem that needs solving. Put simply, the existing CircuitPython libraries aren’t too impressive for gaming. The DisplayIO library tends to do full display refreshes, which are slow on such tiny displays, and the Stage library just wasn’t flexible enough for [MakerClassCZ]’s liking. So he built his own.

PicoGame, like the others, implements the performance-sensitive things in C, but does partial updates for the screen, on its own massively increasing the framerate. On the other end, it uses fixed-point math–much cheaper than soft-float–and makes an active effort to keep the RAM usage low so Python can have it. What’s even more clever is using the downtime between sending one tiny portion of frame to calculate the next just in time.

Of course, the display is still the limit. If you need to update a lot of it, you might end up with 10 FPS if you’re lucky. But if you can settle for less motion, you could see 100.

Do you miss cleaning up digital poo? Long live the 90s! This open-source project is a Nano-based Tamagotchi (digital
pet) emulator living in a 3D printed custom shel was shared by by heychaostheory on Instructables.

Tamagotchis are digital pets from the late 20th century, and people still love them today! Did you know that they were pioneers in several technological spheres?

1. Affective computing (ie making us care about little pixels)
2. Autonomous behaviour (AI who??)
3. Infrared communication (in later models)
4. Micro-hardware in toys

So let’s go back to the 90s and make our own Gen 1 Tamagotchi!

See full details and learn more!

Thanks for sharing!

The Pico_USB_Disp library implements USB display protocols on resource-constrained embedded platforms without requiring Linux or a desktop operating system.

With a supported adapter, a Raspberry Pi Pico or an ESP32 board can provide Full HD display output (1920 × 1080 at 60 Hz) using only two USB data lines (D+ and D-) for communication.

USB display adapters are normally designed for desktop operating systems and require proprietary or platform-specific drivers.

This library implements the required USB communication protocol directly on an MCU, allowing supported adapters to be used without Windows, macOS, or Linux.

• Draw to a USB display with #include <usb_disp.h> and only a few lines of code.
• Automatically select the clock and display mode from the monitor’s EDID.
• Automatic integration with LovyanGFX / LVGL v9.
• Build with the Arduino IDE, Raspberry Pi Pico SDK, or ESP-IDF.
• The library also supports Windows, Linux, and macOS. On these platforms, it communicates with the display adapter through libusb.

Because the adapter generates a standards-compliant video signal, it generally provides broader monitor compatibility than implementations that use simplified DVI signaling, such as PicoDVI.

There are Arduino and ESP-IDF versions of the library.

Read more on the project page and see this MIT licensed project on GitHub.

On July 2nd, three days before the British Grand Prix, Arduino brought a hands-on workshop to Silverstone for 40 students aged 16 to 19, supported by Mission 44 and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. in the framework of the Igniting Inclusion Summit. The setting couldn’t have been more fitting, and as part of the bigger Qualcomm family, we are proud to have had the chance to empower young and bright minds with an activity that was such a natural fit for our team. 

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., through its Snapdragon^® brand, is a Founding Corporate Sponsor of Mission 44 – a global foundation established by Sir Lewis Hamilton with a clear belief: that it’s possible to succeed no matter your background. Through inclusive education and improving access to STEM careers, the foundation works to build a fairer, more inclusive future – and events like this one are a direct expression of that mission. Not to mention, the workshop was an exciting moment for students (and us!) to meet the 7-time F1 world champion himself!

From unboxing to AI model in under an hour

Many of the students, who are supported by Mission 44 partners AFBE-UK and upReach, had never worked with sensors, AI, or machine learning before. Yet within the first hour, they were already collecting live data and exploring how AI models are trained.

The goal was simple: to understand how an F1-inspired telemetry system works. Through hands-on experiments with Arduino^® UNO Q 4GB, Arduino^® Modulino and using Arduino^® App Lab and Edge Impulse as their development environments, students experienced how information is collected, analyzed, and turned into insights in real-time.

Discovering the tools that bring a future in racing within reach

For the final part of the session, some of the students raced miniature cars around a custom-built track while accelerometers streamed motion data over Bluetooth. UNO Q processed telemetry at the edge, computer vision tracked each car, and leaderboards displayed lap times, crashes, and performance metrics in real-time.

For many students, seeing their race transformed into live telemetry was the moment it all clicked.

Telemetry is exactly the kind of real-world application that we are seeing with UNO Q. Not only in our demos and workshops, but also in professional motorsport contexts (have you read about Star Stream’s success in bringing F1-level telemetry to race teams and fleet operators around the world?).

Ready to build your own future?

STEM skills are increasingly central to careers across every industry – and access to hands-on learning experiences like this one can make a real difference in who gets to build that future. Giving young people from all backgrounds the tools, the context, and the confidence to engage with technology is something we care about deeply at Arduino.

Visit Mission 44 to learn more about their work, and if today’s post made you want to start your own journey into AI, sensors, and real-world data… just get your own hands on an UNO Q!

Qualcomm branded products are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. Arduino and UNO, and the Arduino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arduino S.r.l.

The post Mission 44 students at Silverstone go from zero to AI-powered racing telemetry in 90 minutes! appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Waveshare RP2350-POE-ETH is a Raspberry Pi RP2350 board with Ethernet implemented through a W6300 chip, support for optional PoE (Power-over-Ethernet), and two GPIO headers. We had covered a few Raspberry Pi RP2350 boards with Ethernet from WIZNet, including the W5100S-EVB-Pico2, W5500-EVB-Pico2, and W6300-EVB-Pico2, but none were advertised with PoE at the time. Since then, the 4-pin WizPOE-P1 module changes that, and the Waveshare RP2350-POE-ETH board offers a more affordable option. Waveshare RP2350-POE-ETH specifications: Microcontroller – Raspberry Pi RP2350A CPU Dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 processor @ 150 MHz Dual-core 32-bit RISC-V Hazard3 @ 150 MHz Up to two cores can be used at a time, either 2x Arm, 2x RISC-V, or 1x Arm + 1x RISC-V Memory – 520KB internal RAM Storage – 8KB OTP Storage Storage – 16Mbit SPI NOR flash Ethernet 10/100Mbps Ethernet RJ45 port via WIZnet W6300 “iEthernet” chip 6-pin PoE connector for optional module USB – USB 1.1 C-Type [...]

The post Waveshare RP2350-POE-ETH – A Raspberry Pi RP2350 MCU board with PoE appeared first on CNX Software - Embedded Systems News.

LILYGO T-Display C5 is an ESP32-C5 board with a 1.9-inch IPS color LCD, a USB-C port for power and programming, Lithium battery support, and GPIO expansion via headers and two Qwiic expansion connectors. The main benefit of using an ESP32-C5 chip is support for dual-band WiFi 6 connectivity (2.4/5.0 GHz), and it also keeps Bluetooth LE 5.x and the 802.15.4 radio for Zigbee/Thread/Matter found in the ESP32-C6. LILYGO T-Display C5 specifications: Wireless module – Espressif Systems ESP32-WROOM-C5-1U-N16R8 SoC – ESP32-C5HR8 CPU Single-core 32-bit RISC-V processor @ up to 240 MHz Low-power RISC-V core @ 40 MHz acting as the main processor for power-sensitive applications Memory – 384 KB SRAM on-chip, 8MB PSRAM Storage – 320 KB ROM Wireless Connectivity Dual-band (2.4GHz/5 GHz) 802.11ax WiFi 6, with 802.11b/g/n WiFi 4 standard fallback Bluetooth 5.0 Low Energy (LE) 802.15.4 radio for Zigbee 3.0 and Thread 1.3 Storage – 16MB PSRAM Antenna – [...]

The post LILYGO T-Display C5 board features 1.9-inch IPS color LCD, battery support, Qwiic expansion connectors appeared first on CNX Software - Embedded Systems News.

Jake Wachlin (Energy Labs) has designed the Open RC Spotter, an open-source ESP32-based telemetry and data logger for RC cars, trucks, and other RC toys. The platform logs synchronized GPS position, acceleration, gyroscope, steering, throttle, battery voltage, temperature, and lap timing data to a microSD card, while also supporting live telemetry over Wi-Fi and ESP-NOW. We have previously written about telemetry and data-logging hardware designed for full-sized vehicles, such as the Macchina A0 ESP32 CAN board, which supports OBD-II diagnostics and RaceChrono integration. Compared to that, this ESP32-based logger is designed for RC cars and trucks, combining GPS, IMU, PWM monitoring, and onboard data logging in a compact ESP32-based platform. Open RC Spotter specifications: Wireless module – ESP32-WROOM-32E-N4 SoC – ESP32 dual-core Tensilica LX6 microcontroller @ up to 240 MHz with 520KB SRAM Storage – 4MB flash Wireless – 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 4.2 BR/LE connectivity, built-in PCB antenna [...]

The post Open RC Spotter is an open-source ESP32 telemetry and data logger for RC cars and toys appeared first on CNX Software - Embedded Systems News.