ST and our partner Qt will be giving a webinar tomorrow (for the Americas and for Europe/Asia) to teach developers how to write, run, and deploy a graphical user interface (GUI) on an STM32 microcontroller. The seminar will use the STM32F769I-DISCO development board, and attendees simply need the Qt for MCU (evaluation) license to follow along and get the knowledge that will enable them to apply these concepts to much larger projects and other STM32 MCUs. Additionally, what makes this webinar special is that there will be a speaker from Qt (Yoann Lopes, Senior Pre-Sales Engineer) and ST (Sami Guizani, Product Marketing Manager), meaning that attendees will benefit from a deeper knowledge of the software and the microcontrollers, while also enjoying a direct access to both companies during the Q&A.
Qt for MCUs? Are You Sure It’s not a Typo?
Qt is a popular toolkit that is more common on Linux, Windows, or macOS, as it traditionally runs on microprocessors (MPUs). Its strength resides in its ability to run on multiple platforms with little changes to the code base while offering native features and processing speeds. In fact, developers working on our first STM32 MPU, the STM32MP1, greatly benefit from a free trial firmware that enables them to run Qt applications on their Linux system. However, Qt recently announced a new initiative allowing the execution of Qt on MCUs so developers can enjoy some of the modules and libraries they know and love. However, the inherent hardware restrictions of microcontrollers mean that developers don’t get a one-to-one port of the toolkit available for microprocessors. The webinar will thus enable them to better understand how to navigate this new platform.
The video above gives an idea of what developers can expect at the beginning of their project, while the film below shows a GUI running on STM32F4 and STM32F7 MCUs, thus demonstrating that the lessons from the webinar will apply to a vast array of devices. Qt for MCUs already supports the embedded hardware graphic accelerators of our STM32 F4, STM32F7, and STM32H7, thus greatly optimizing performances. Neverthless, developers must still work within the memory constraints of a microcontroller for maximum animation fluidity, and this webinar will serve as a starting point. A GUI can often make a big difference to the final user, and they are ever more prevalent than ever. Teams must thus not only understand how to build them, but how to adapt to the platform they run on.
