QT for MUC - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: ali_asadzadeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2021, 11:02:59 am
content: Hi,Downloading and installing QT is getting harder and harderI want to know if it has a free license or at least does it have an evaluation license? How can we download it and test it? There is no direct download link on their website, or at least I could not find it easily.Also Has any one in here used it on NXP or STM parts, Does it worth it?

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2021, 09:49:40 pm
content: mm..yes, you don't have the direct download no more but the downloader actually works better (for me, at least. in all my installations over the years, it's one of the very few downloaders i know that works better than a direct link)QT for MCU i don't think it's available for the general public, you have to get request it from QT by filling in the form?but the binaries for the examplest should be available..

author: AaronLee
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2021, 11:47:38 pm
content: Years ago I had a project that used graphics via a Microchip PIC32MX and a separate graphics controller/RAM that worked very well, with very speedy operations and no artifacts when updating the screen, via highly optimized assembler routines for the graphics, and no libraries whatsoever. The customer hired their own firmware engineer who totally updated the project using QT, being he was familiar with QT on Windows and other CPUs. He ended up making the system almost unusable due to very slow update speeds and lots of artifacts when updating the screen. All their customers complained about the "downgrade". They asked me to take back the project, but I refused, so I don't really know the details of how QT was implemented on the MCU. But let's just say the performance on MCUs, at least the one I saw, was not in any way acceptable. So before you decide on QT, you might want to check if there's any example videos of it running on the MCU you're interested in, to see if it meets your performance goals. Pay close attention to the LCD resolution, and how screens are updated, and how much is updated at one time. With only updating minor details, often poor graphics performance can be masked, but when changing to an entirely new screen there's no way to mask the lack of performance.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2021, 12:33:57 am
content: For a MCU, I think considering something like LVGL makes more sense:https://lvgl.io/

author: ali_asadzadeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2021, 06:14:16 am
content: For ST I'm using Touchgfx for now, But I was considering the new i.mxrt1170 from nxp, It lacked a good graphics engine comparable to Touchgfx , of course I mean a free version, so I thought maybe QT can answer that.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2021, 05:10:41 pm
content: Then take a look at LVGL. It's the closest to Touchgfx, it's relatively lightweight, no strings attached, supports a number of targets and rather easy to write support for hardware that would not already have support. Take a look at the demos to get a feel of what you can achieve.As to QT for MCUs, it's only available with a commercial license:https://doc.qt.io/QtForMCUs/It's also quite big, and C++. So you'd definitely need to figure out whether you want to use C++ for your project or not.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2021, 06:07:05 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 08, 2021, 05:10:41 pmlooking at most of my recent projects, i'd LOVE to have C++ available for my target MCU. strongly typed enums, classes, and better object support from the debugger.

author: ali_asadzadeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2021, 07:27:31 am
content: I really like the C++ too, because the 400MHz above MCU deserve that too.

author: apurvdate
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2021, 01:03:28 pm
content: The last QT version I worked with was 5.10, when complete offline installer was available for community (free) edition. Even in that version embedded part was not present. It was possible it add separate 'Kit' in the options with proper compiler, debugger & all setup. But it was not QT for embedded; it was more like QT creator as generic IDE for development with your choice of build tools.AFAIK QT for Embedded is always paid only option.