RS DesignSpark announces Arduino UNO Q Community Challenge winner

He has scooped the $5,000 prize for his innovative project, Smart Water Guardian AI, which addresses an issue affecting communities worldwide, access to safe water. 

RS DesignSpark launched the global Arduino UNO Q Community Challenge to encourage its members - engineers and makers - to explore the growing potential of edge AI, by designing a solution to themed challenges using the Arduino UNO Q next-generation board. It combines the classic Arduino form factor with powerful modern capabilities, and is the first Arduino board to feature a dual-brain architecture. This makes it ideal for robotics, IoT systems, computer vision, and smart automation projects that need both AI processing and rule-based control.

Participants were invited to develop innovative solutions, choosing one of three themes: 

• AI at the Edge: Smarter Everyday Objects
• Sustainability through Intelligence: Solutions for Greener Living
• Human Machine Harmony: Assisted Tech Reinvented 

"The competition attracted a strong field of entries, showcasing creative and practical applications of the Arduino UNO Q platform. The standard of submissions was very high, presenting a challenging final decision for the judges," said RS DesignSpark director Pete Wood. 

The winning submission, Smart Water Guardian AI, uses artificial intelligence to identify subtle changes in water quality before conditions become unsafe. Traditional water monitoring systems typically generate alerts only after specific limits have been exceeded. Smart Water Guardian AI analyses multiple water quality indicators together over time and provides a proactive approach, enabling earlier intervention and supporting more effective water management.

The project demonstrated considered use of the Arduino UNO Q architecture by distributing tasks across its two processing environments. Real-time sensing and control are managed by the microcontroller, while the Linux-based processor handles data analysis and AI inference. Through the platform's Bridge functionality, both systems work together seamlessly, enabling responsive, local processing without relying on cloud infrastructure. This edge-based approach delivers the flexibility required for advanced analytics while maintaining real-time performance.

"This is the first time I have seen this type of project using the UNO Q. The submission showed strong technical execution and offered comprehensive supporting documentation and presentation. The project demonstrates how emerging technologies like the Arduino UNO Q can be applied to solve real-world challenges in an accessible and impactful way," stated Andrea Richetta, principal product evangelist at Arduino. 

While Smart Water Guardian AI serves as a proof of concept, it already combines several advanced technologies, including multi-sensor monitoring, time-series analysis, on-device AI, visualisation, and alerting capabilities. The concept offers significant opportunities for future development, including expanded training datasets, model refinement, real-world testing, and deployment across distributed monitoring networks.

"Congratulations to Biaou David Barthélémy Kochoni on this well-deserved achievement. His success reflects not only the strength of his project, but also the innovation and creativity demonstrated throughout this year's Arduino UNO Q Community Challenge," Wood concluded. 

Kochoni is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Signal Processing and Instrumentation Engineering at Jean Monnet University in France.

RS DesignSpark is a global community for engineers and designers, providing resources, tools, and inspiration to drive innovation and creativity in engineering. For the full article covering the winning submission, click here.

For more information about the Prove it: Arduino UNO Q Community Challenge, visit https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/the-arduino-uno-q-community-challenge.