A client recently asked me to help them get a legacy HAL driver under test. They want to use TDD to maintain and extend the driver. We ran into a couple of problems, because the tests run on a 64-bit computer, whereas the production code runs on a 32-bit microcontroller. I’ll explain the problems and how to solve them.
Read More »Applying TDD to HAL Drivers with Memory-Mapped I/O
I never got the hang of UML: overly complicated, hard to understand, too close to code. Hence, I was skeptical about C4 diagrams when I… Read More »Visualising the Architecture of Qt Embedded Systems: Context and Container Diagrams
With Team Topologies, Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais have written a brilliant book how to create a high-performance software development organisation with the best team structure and interaction. Organisations are complex adaptive systems that change as the result of the interactions between their components (e.g., the teams) and the interactions with other systems (e.g., the rest of the organisation, competitors, suppliers, technology and market trends). The resulting changes are hard to predict and hard to control.
Read More »Book Review: “Team Topologies” by Matthew Skelton and Manuel PaisI gave a talk at Meeting Embedded 2021 on 4 November 2021. First, I introduced the hexagonal architecture (a.k.a. ports-and-adapters architecture) in general. Then, I showed a walking skeleton of the architecture for a harvester terminal.
Read More »My Talk “Hexagonal Architecture: The Standard for Qt Embedded Applications” at Meeting Embedded 2021
Creating an architecture means answering many questions about the ecosystem, in which the Qt embedded system operates. While the questions are very similar for all Qt embedded systems, the answers and their priorities differ. So, you should be able to transfer the questions and answers from my running example, a harvester terminal, to your system.
Read More »My Talk “A Successful Architecture for Qt Embedded Systems” at Qt Day Italy 2021
Our quest for a successful architecture of a harvester terminal continues. In this episode, we discuss when a system with a single application is good enough and when a system with multiple applications and a window manager is the better choice. Sometimes, a single-application system with a window manager is just the right choice.
Read More »Architecture of Qt Embedded Systems: Single vs. Multiple GUI ApplicationsSetting up QtCreator for cross-compilation with CMake took me 15-20 hours the first two or three times. The next half a dozen times took me… Read More »How to Set Up QtCreator for Cross-Compilation with CMake in 5 Minutes
September 2021 saw the launch of Qt 6.2 – the first Qt 6 version with feature parity to Qt 5.15. I wanted to find out whether Qt 6.2 is fit for products. So, I migrated the HMI application of the ROPA sugar beet harvesters from Qt 5.12 over Qt 5.15 to Qt 6.2. The migration went very smooth and quick. And yes, Qt 6.2 is fit for products!
Read More »Migrating a Harvester HMI from Qt 5.12 to Qt 6.2
Which system-on-chip is best suited for your Qt embedded system? Should you build a custom Linux system with Yocto, use a container OS or a desktop Linux? Should you use Qt Commercial or Qt LGPLv3? How will the system be updated? What are the operating conditions of the system? How does the system communicate with sensors, ECUs and the cloud?
This is only a small selection of the 50+ questions in this post. You best tackle these questions early in the project. Fixing wrong decisions becomes exponentially harder with the duration of the project. Your decisions can make or break a project.
Read More »Architecture of Qt Embedded Systems: Getting Started