QutiPi Project

Developing with Qt on embedded processors is well, AWESOME!

Due to Qt’s QML engine, all graphics for interfaces etc are rendered on the GPU. This reduces CPU load and also allows for the os to have no window manager (EGL or LinuxFB interface).

QutiPi’s OS comes with Qt 5.9 LTS as standard. To allow you to easily get started a “qt starter” project was created with comes with the following:

1. Default architecture which we suggest you follow for
   1. View managers to manage interfaces
   2. State machines for system functionality
   3. Services to perform tasks
   4. Resources for config files, images, QML layouts
2. Fluid framework to create interface to Google’s material standard
3. QutiPi Cpp framework for controlling hardware
4. File logger & debugging instance / configuration
5. Serial helper for async serial communication
6. Thread helper for life long running threads
7. JSON file loader
8. Settings container

The Qt-Starter project is the perfect place to start!

QutiPi C++ is an opensource embedded framework to aid in creating programs on embedded platforms. The main goal is to allow easy control of the IC’s peripherals and communication with remote on board ICs.

There are many different C++ libraries out there for the embedded processors especially say, the Raspberry Pi. However the over all architecture makes them difficult to understand, expand and test. Even worse when switching to a different processor you have to learn a whole new framework.

The architecture of QutiPi-C++ allows additional embedded processors and boards to be integrated with a standard API; however each target implementation is separated from one another. This ensures when new targets are being implemented, stable onesare not effected.

This hardware design is a motherboard design for a Raspberry Pi CM3. The PCB is only 2 layers, hence cheap to manufacture and easy to assemble and test.

The motherboard also comes with Ethernet, USB, HDMI, Audio output, SDIO interface to FPC, DSI (PI 7″ LCD Interface) to FPC, CAM interface to FPC, Serial (SPI, I2C, UART, PWM, PCM etc) interfaces to FPC, Clock outputs to FPC, General GPIO interface to FPC.

This design is soon to be replaced with QutiPiV2.

Coming soon…

QutiPi OS is built using Yocto, which is a Linux build tool. This allows developers to create custom Linux distributions to suit their needs.

QutiPi has a meta layer designed for embedded systems, with support for Raspberry Pi CM3 and Qt 5.9. The meta-layers compiles Linux from scratch for the selected processor and QutiPi hardware. The benefit is the same meta-layer will be used for all hardware and embedded processors supported, hence creating a standard OS.

QutiPi OS totals 600Mb which includes full Qt 5.9 libraries, busybox, systemd and other addons. It can be easily extended and modified to suit any needs.

Coming soon…