embedded systems

Cover of book Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais

Book Review: “Team Topologies” by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais

by Burkhard Stubert
2022/04/232022/04/29

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.

Visualising the Architecture of Qt Embedded Systems: Context and Container Diagrams

by Burkhard Stubert
2022/03/26

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

My Talk “Hexagonal Architecture: The Standard for Qt Embedded Applications” at Meeting Embedded 2021

by Burkhard Stubert
2021/11/072021/11/12

I 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.

Ports-and-adapters architecture for harvester terminal with GUI, Cloud, Machine and Customer adapter.

My Talk “A Successful Architecture for Qt Embedded Systems” at Qt Day Italy 2021

by Burkhard Stubert
2021/07/112021/07/18

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.

Window manager showing split view of home (left) and of turbine cam (right).

Architecture of Qt Embedded Systems: Single vs. Multiple GUI Applications

by Burkhard Stubert
2021/06/012021/06/19

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.

by Burkhard Stubert
2021/03/292021/04/06

Setting 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

Migrating the driver terminal of a sugar beet harvester from Qt 5 to Qt 6

Migrating a Harvester HMI from Qt 5.12 to Qt 6.2

by Burkhard Stubert
2021/01/172021/12/29

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!

High-level architecture of Qt embedded system with controller, cloud and sensor

Architecture of Qt Embedded Systems: Getting Started

by Burkhard Stubert
2020/12/202021/06/19

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.

Build, deploy and run Qt application on embedded device by pressing the Run button in QtCreator.

Cross-Compiling Qt Embedded Applications with QtCreator and CMake

by Burkhard Stubert
2020/11/212021/11/25

We change the code of our Qt application in QtCreator and press the Run button to try the changes on an embedded device. QtCreator cross-compiles the application, deploys it to the device and runs it on the device. QtCreator performs these steps in a breeze, because we spent quite some time to define a QtCreator Kit. The fairly unknown script configure-qtcreator.sh from the Yocto layer meta-boot2qt automates most of the kit definition.