Embedded

Mirror Dual Displays of Differing Resolutions on i.MX8M-PLUS

For most of our work on embedded devices, the setups are typically quite static: the main board, a display with known resolution, some sensors. But sometimes there is a requirement that shakes up the status quo. On one recent project, that was definitely the case. The customer said  “We have an…

A Closer Look at FreeRTOS

In this second installment of our series on FreeRTOS, we take a more detailed look at its key features, supported platforms, licensing and cost. I'll also note other variants of FreeRTOS, as well as some add-on tools and libraries. In contrast to a full operating system,…

Want a Competitive Advantage? Focus on UX and Software

You just shipped your impressive new product, built on the latest System on a Chip (SOC) from XYZ Microsystems. You chose this SOC because it decreased your parts count and reduced your manufacturing bill of materials. And with its fast CPU, this SOC powers your product to process four times as…

Highlights from Qt World Summit 2019 in Berlin

*/ I just got back from a very successful Qt World Summit 2019 in Berlin. This year marked a much-appreciated return to the traditional two-day conference schedule (with a third, optional training day). Last year's shows in Boston and Berlin had a compressed format with only one day for the…

Embedded Software Development is Hard. Avoid These Mistakes

The market for embedded software development is one of the fastest growing areas of computing. But as the market grows, so too does the complexity of the devices. At a time when manufacturers are demanding more sophisticated "iPhone like" user interfaces and greater product functionality, today’s…

Exploring ZeroMQ's Request Reply Pattern

This blog is the third in an occasional series on ZeroMQ. For background, read part 1 and part 2. ZeroMQ encourages us to think in terms of patterns — what we are going to do rather than how we're going to do it. We don't need to worry about the how since ZeroMQ takes care of it. …

A Look at Toradex Colibri SOM with Aster Carrier Board

This blog is part of a continuing series on GPIO programming. If you missed earlier installments, find them here. In this post we'll look at a representative embedded board, one that we use for our embedded training classes and that we have used on a number of customer projects. Toradex [1] is a…

Control Raspberry Pi GPIO Pins from Python

In this blog post we'll look at how to control Raspberry Pi GPIO pins from the Python programming language using two different modules: Rpi.GPIO and Gpiozero. A Bit About Python Python [1] is an interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language that has been around since 1991. It is…

6 Embedded Tools You Should Know

In the past, embedded systems often ran very small operating systems with no filesystem, or even ran on the "bare metal." With the increasing power and lower cost of hardware, including SOCs (Systems on a Chip), many embedded systems are moving to a full operating system, often based on Linux…

Are Your IoT Devices Putting Your Business or Your Customers at Risk?

Nearly half of all companies in the US using an Internet of Things (IoT) network have been the victims of at least one security breach. Forty-eight percent. That’s according to a recent survey of 400 IT decision-makers across 19 industries conducted by strategy consulting group Altman Vilandrie…

Your Jumpstart for Embedded Development

Get Qt Running on Your Embedded Platform Quickly and Painlessly Software often ends up being the final barrier before a new product with embedded hardware can be released to manufacturing. The Qt® framework helps reduce the magnitude of this barrier by allowing the development of embedded…

Yocto Quick Start

I've mentioned the Yocto (1) embedded framework in previous blog posts. Some people may have shied away from trying it because they have heard it has a steep learning curve. While Yocto is complex, it is very easy to get started and you can do so without any embedded hardware. In this post I'…

Embedded ARM® Processors

Gumstix Verdex Pro (XScale™) ICS used Verdex Pro as a performance test bed for a client that was developing a custom board with the Marvell® PXA270 processor. This project called for ICS to port Qt 4.5 to the embedded platform, validate the port, and assess its CPU performance and memory…

Traffic Management Systems

The traffic signal controller represents one of the most important intelligent technology and communication components of a signalized intersection. As such, today's advanced traffic signal controller must integrate leading edge electronics, while supporting industry standards and specifications.…

Marine Systems

Advanced marine echo location and GPS software has taken fish finding to a whole new level. ICS marine customers especially benefit from modern centralized monitoring and touchscreen control, which integrates accurate sonar, coastal charts and maps with echo location and fish finding software on a…

Fitness Equipment

ICS has worked with some of the premier commercial and personal fitness manufacturers. One such leader is Precor. They design and build premium fitness equipment that has set the standard for continuous state-of-the-art fitness innovation. ICS helped develop Precor's next generation of Experience…

Automotive Software Solutions

At ICS, we have applied our extensive automotive domain knowledge and engineering expertise with UX design and graphics capabilities to deliver custom, integrated automotive in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems consumers have come to expect. We work with industry leaders such as GENIVI, with…

Agricultural Software Solutions

With the advent of smartphones and touch technology, manufacturers of industrial solutions, such as agricultural manufacturers, are looking to improve and modernize tractors, combines and field operations with sophisticated, yet simple to use state-of-the-art touchscreen command centers. These…

Aerospace and Defense

The aerospace and defense industries have led innovative manufacturing techniques, embraced new ideas and adopted better ways to build technology. Aerospace manufacturers are facing numerous pressures to perform and deliver to increasing market demand. Manufacturers need to automate and are…

Medical and Life Sciences

Global demand for high-quality medical systems is driving manufacturing expansion into emerging markets. This new opportunity and growth comes with specific challenges for those companies willing to take on the cost and risk of new medical device or application development. ICS understands the…

Industrial Controls

Our Qt consultants have built a range of industrial control products to support modern commercial factories. We've built effective user interfaces and smart software to drive intelligent mechanical, hydraulic, food service equipment, manufacturers' products and service suppliers. From smarter…

Getting Started with MRAA on the Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi (1) is one of the more popular low-cost computers on the market. It has an ARM CPU, hardware video acceleration, RAM, SD card mass storage, and almost everything that a regular desktop computer has to offer at a fraction of the size and cost. It also has a set of GPIO (General…

What's New in Qt 5.6.0: QtSerialBus

QtSerialBus is a new Qt module, introduced as a technical preview in Qt 5.6.0. It supports two serial interface protocols that are commonly used on embedded systems: CAN bus and Modbus. In this blog post we'll take a brief look at this new module and what it provides. What is CAN bus? CAN bus (1…

Embedded World Exhibition & Conference

Embedded World Exhibition & Conference will be held February 23-25 in Nuremburg, Germany. Each year the embedded world Exhibition & Conference offers the embedded community the opportunity to obtain information about new products and innovations, enter into an exchange and to maintain and…

Top 10 Scary Qt Mistakes

Inspired by Halloween, I'd like to present a list of ten "scary" mistakes using Qt. Based on the wide experience of ICS with Qt consulting projects, I have provided a list of errors that can doom any project. 1. Waiting too long to test on hardware One of Qt's strengths is its…

Qt on the Raspberry Pi 2

The Raspberry Pi 2 computer, released in February 2015, is the latest generation of Raspberry Pi hardware. It is a significantly faster machine than the original Raspberry Pi, with a new Broadcom BCM2836 system on a chip that has a quad-core ARM Cortex A7 CPU running at 900 MHz. The GPU is a…

ICS and Toradex Announce Collaboration

ICS to Provide Support and Consulting for Qt Applications on Toradex Platforms, Providing Powerful Options for Embedded Developers  Nürnberg, Germany, February 26, 2014 — ICS is pleased to announce a partnership with Toradex® to provide support and consulting services for developing Qt® …

2014 Year in Review

As the year draws to a close, I thought it would be good to take a look back at some of the major events of the Qt world in 2014. Qt is now on a regular schedule of two major releases per year. We saw Qt 5.3.0 (1) come out in May and Qt 5.4.0 (2) in December. More minor releases occur, as needed,…

Raspberry Pi Update

Since my last blog about the Raspberry Pi in August, there have been a number of interesting new developments and the Raspberry Pi project has continued to move ahead. As expected, the new Raspberry Pi Model A+ was released. With the Model A+, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has been able to achieve a…

Summer Grab Bag

It's summertime here in the Northern hemisphere, and many people are on vacation (I just got back from a week off, myself). Despite that, we are very busy at ICS with consulting projects and preparing for the upcoming Qt Developer Days (1) conferences to be held in Berlin and San…

Building Qt 5 on the Toradex T30

In this blog posting, we will describe the steps needed to build Qt 5 on the Toradex T30 hardware platform. This blog post was originally published on Jul 10, 2013. These instructions have now been updated to simplify them, add some additional information and to build the…

The Raspberry Pi Camera Module

Introduction In this post we'll look at the Raspberry Pi camera module, a low cost hardware module that supports still picture and video recording and is the first official hardware add-on for the Raspberry Pi. We'll also look at the camera's features and specifications, how to set it up…

Building Qt and QtWayland for Raspberry Pi

This document will explain how to build Qt 5.2.0 beta1 and QtWayland for Raspberry Pi (http://www.raspberrypi.org/). The procedure will likely work with the Qt 5.2.0 release candidate and final release, once they become available. There are a variety of HOWTOs and other documents on the web on how…

Building Qt 5 on Raspberry Pi

This is a HOW TO guide for building Qt 5 for the Raspberry Pi, and building and deploying Qt 5 apps using Qt Creator. This guide will be using Raspbian "Wheezy", a Debian based distro designed for the Raspberry Pi. This guide also assumes the use of Linux or UNIX on the workstation side. Note:…

Please, may I have another slice of Raspberry Pi...

About three weeks ago, Nokia arranged for ICS to gain access to the Raspberry Pi board so that we could help with an exploratory open source effort to get Qt working on this platform. That is how I got my chance to hack some code for this amazing board. The idea was to get a bleeding edge version…

Qt 5 + Raspberry Pi Demo

Here's a video of my colleague, Roland Krause, demonstrating Qt 5 + Raspberry Pi at Qt Dev Days in Munich. Stop by our booth in San Francisco next week to see it first hand...and for your chance to win one of your very own!

Raspberry Pi is Shipping

The Raspberry Pi boards are now shipping in volume from the distributors and unboxing videos are showing up all over the Internet. If you were one of the winners of a board from ICS you should have received an e-mail today with the details on how to redeem your voucher. If not, check your spam…