Arduino has announced the Arduino USB Camera, a $34 webcam built for vision and voice projects on its two Linux-capable Q boards, the UNO Q and the VENTUNO Q. In its October 15, 2026 announcement, the company calls it "our first official, standalone Arduino USB Camera" and pitches it as an accessory "designed to help simplify edge AI and computer vision". The camera combines an autofocus sensor, a built-in microphone and a touch-dimmable LED ring light in one housing, and it mounts with a monitor clip, a flat desk stand or a standard tripod thread.

Specifications

Arduino's documentation page lists:

  • Sony IMX376 image sensor capturing up to 3840 × 2160 (UHD 4K) at 30 fps in MJPEG
  • Autofocus from 20 cm to infinity, F/2.0 lens, 80° diagonal field of view
  • Integrated LED ring light with warm and cool white settings
  • Built-in microphone
  • USB Video Class (UVC) device, recognized without drivers on UNO Q and VENTUNO Q

The store listing adds a sliding privacy shutter, a coiled USB-A cable, a weight of 0.14 kg, and CE, RoHS, REACH, FCC, WEEE and UKCA certifications. The documentation gives only the 4K MJPEG mode; it does not list other resolution and frame-rate combinations. Arduino links a full datasheet (TPX00246) from the same page.

Price and availability

The Arduino Store USA lists the camera at $34.00 under SKU TPX00246 as of October 20, 2026, with an "Add to cart" button but no stock label and no ship date. The announcement does not mention other regional stores or distributors.

Where it fits

Arduino already sells a camera for edge vision, but as a microcontroller board: the Nicla Vision, which Arduino describes as "a ready-to-use, standalone camera for analyzing and processing images on the edge", pairs a 2MP GC2145 color camera with a dual-core STM32H747 microcontroller. The USB Camera is instead a UVC peripheral for the Q boards, which run Linux on Qualcomm processors. The UNO Q uses a Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210, and the VENTUNO Q uses a Qualcomm Dragonwing IQ8 (QCS8275). That means models run on the board's application processor, inside Arduino App Lab, rather than on a microcontroller next to the sensor.

What Arduino says it is for

The announcement frames the camera as an input for the AI models in Arduino App Lab. It names YOLO-X and MobileNet for object detection, with examples such as detecting faces and counting objects, and MediaPipe for gesture recognition. For VENTUNO Q only, it suggests running Qwen VLM locally to produce natural-language scene descriptions. It also proposes combining the video feed and microphone audio with local speech recognition and a language model to build interactive desktop companions. Arduino gives no frame-rate or inference-speed figures for any of these models, so performance on each board is unknown until users measure it.

The post also points to an online workshop in which Arduino built a face recognition system with the UNO Q and App Lab, which is the closest thing to a worked example so far.

What It Means for Makers

  • VENTUNO Q owners can plug the camera into one of the board's two USB 3.0 Type-A ports. The store FAQ says to "plug it straight into one of the board's USB-A ports, or use a hub."
  • UNO Q owners need a hub. The store FAQ says to "connect the camera through a USB-C hub," and Arduino's UNO Q documentation lists a USB camera among the peripherals that can be attached through a USB-C dongle with external power delivery plugged into the board's USB-C port, recommending the 4 GB RAM UNO Q variant for that setup. The announcement's line that the camera "Plugs directly into the USB ports of UNO Q or VENTUNO Q" glosses over this, so budget for the hub.
  • It is not tied to Arduino boards. The store page says the camera "works with all major operating systems, including Windows, macOS and Linux," so it can double as a desk webcam or feed a vision pipeline on a laptop while a project is in development.
  • Who it is for: Arduino says it is "designed for developers, makers, and educators who want to add computer-vision capabilities", and its selling point over a generic UVC webcam is that Arduino has tested it with the Q boards and App Lab models, per the store FAQ.
  • Before buying: check the datasheet on Arduino Docs for mounting dimensions and the full list of video modes, since the product pages give only the maximum.

Sources