How to quickly develop an embedded system interface?

The interactive interface development requirements for industrial products are getting closer and closer to products in the consumer sector. It is especially important to choose a fast and low-cost embedded UI development solution. This article will introduce you to a new framework-based embedded UI development platform.

1 . Serial screen

The serial port screen refers to the screen that can be controlled by the serial port command, such as UART (TTL, 232, 485), SPI, etc. If there are many control pins and there is a certain timing relationship between them, they are collectively referred to as parallel port screens. All drawing, display and human-computer interaction of the serial screen rely on the command and data transmission between the MCU and the serial screen. The biggest advantage of the serial port screen is that it is convenient to develop and greatly reduces the occupation of the IO port of the main control chip. However, in order to achieve a richer display effect, the serial port screen needs to integrate high-performance processor, which also makes the price of the serial port screen bare. The screen is a lot higher.

Most of the serial screens before 2010 are pre-downloaded to the screen by the host computer, and then the preset commands are sent to display various interfaces. After 2014, the more powerful configuration screen makes the serial chain industry chain mature. Since the display of the serial screen depends on its own library, its display flexibility is still limited to some extent.

2. Embedded QT/E

Compared with the direct use of the serial screen, the flexibility and freedom of the embedded QT/E is extremely rich. Embedded QT/E can be considered as a lite version of QT on Linux, which abandoned the Xlib library at the bottom to accommodate the development of embedded applications. With Qt, you only need to develop applications at once, and you can deploy them across different desktop and embedded operating systems without having to rewrite the source code.

3. Embedded emWin

The use of QT/E often requires running an embedded operating system on the microcontroller, so there are certain requirements for the performance of the MCU. In addition, if you have not been exposed to QT/E before, it will take a certain amount of time to use. In contrast, emWin is more suitable for rapid, streamlined UI development.

Developed by SEGGER, Germany, the emWin graphics library provides advanced support for graphic LCD design, greatly simplifying LCD design and reducing time to market. The emWin graphics library provided freely for NXP ARM microcontroller users, with its free commercial library, easy to use, improved MCU performance and color vivid.

4. AWUI&AWTK

The emWin specification has more than a thousand pages. For most developers, just want to use emWin as an interactive interface, it takes a lot of time to learn the emWin API.

In order to make emWin easier to use, Zhiyuan Electronics developed AWUI based on emWin. It is a set of MVVM framework based on C++. It implements basic functions such as data binding, command binding and window navigation, and provides rich GUI components. AWUI is a huge leap from programming directly with emwin because it uses the mvvm programming model to separate (decouple) the interface from the logic. MVVM is evolved from MVC and MVP. Its role is to separate the user interface and business logic, which is conducive to isolation, automatic testing, and division of labor.

AWUI's framework thinking

AWUI currently supports Qt and emWin, uses Designer to edit the interface, and develops ViewModel/Model in C++, so that developers do not need to learn Qt and emWin API. The final application can run on Qt and emWin (to ensure that the control is supported on emWin).

Based on AWUI, Zhiyuan Electronics plans to launch a wider and better-used AWTK during the year. Embedded UI development will be integrated into the AWorks platform as a component, enabling rapid development of interactive interfaces under the platform.