The web and its immense success over the last 20 years had a major influence on technology. It has shaped how we serialize data, consume and provide services and how we develop HMIs.  The next talk presented by basysKom will provide a survey on how this challenge is addressed by Qt.

Qt and the web – where are we today, to be presented by Frank Meerkötter

The presentation is split into three parts.

1) Consuming and interfacing with web-centric services and APIs from a Qt application. Applications that download additional information from a cloud-service or upload the result of their work into such a service are todays norm. We will look into how REST/WebSocket-APIs can be used, also covering topics such as SSL, authentication and authorization. 

2) Implementing services and APIs to be consumed by other – web-centric systems – with Qt. There are a number of scenarios where a Qt application is providing (web)services itself. These include Qt being used headless on an embedded system to implement the backend for a web-based HMI, Qt being used on the server to make an established application accessible to the web, or giving testers (which prefer scripting languages) access to the internals of a Qt HMI. We will look at the upcoming QHttpServer module and the QWebSocketServer module provided by Qt.

3) HMI development. There are a number of scenarios where an HMI needs to run a web browser. This can either mean an HMI that is implemented using Web-technologies (by preference) or a Qt HMI needs to be run in a web browser. Scenarios include embedded devices without a display, giving remote access to HMIs and having an embedded web browser to display a web-based HMI, while the backend is implemented using Qt. We will look at Qt’s webgl-streaming, how to get an application to output VNC (which can be streamed into a browser) as well as what can be done with  Qt for WebAssemby. For the embedded web browser scenario we will look at the Qt WebEngine and how to integrate business logic via QWebChannel.

For each of these three areas we will look into typical scenarios/problems and how to solve them with Qt. We will highlight where Qt really shines and where additional work is left to be done.

This year’s Qt World Summit is just around the corner and basysKom will present four talks in Berlin. Follow us for more details until the event starts.

Qt Quick on low-end i.MX6 devices, to be presented by Jeremias Bosch

Embedded Linux in combination with Qt and Qt Quick are a widespread combination for the development of modern, complex and animated touch HMIs. This technology mixture is used for applications such as in-car infotainment, industrial controls, portable measurement devices or medical systems.

In an ideal world the embedded board is a power house, allowing smooth user experience, small startup time and low latency without the need of spending time and effort into optimization. But not all products can afford a high end i.MX6 with a dual or even quad core CPU with a powerful GPU. Price sensitive applications are often implemented with more affordable, but at the same time less powerful variants such as an i.MX6 dual lite or even smaller. With the consequence, that implementing a top of the line, complex HMI on a small i.MX6 can be a challenge.

The lecture will reflect best practises using Qt Quick on small devices, in particular the i.MX6 dual lite and SoloX. The audience will get a first set of do’s and don’ts, kick starting own Qt Quick projects on low end hardware.