Qt for MCUs 1.1 Adds Support for more STM32 and NXP i.MX RT Boards, FreeRTOS

The first stable version of Qt for MCUs was released in August 2019 in order to bring Qt graphical toolkit to microcontrollers such as STMicro STM32F7, Renesas RH850, or NXP i.MX RT1050. Qt for MCUs would run bare metal on supported boards, and software engineers would develop graphical interface using QML and C++.

Qt for MCUs 1.1 has just been released with the addition of more STM32 and i.MX RT boards, support for FreeRTOS real-time operating system, and more.

Qt for MCUs 1.1 highlights:

Five new supported boards: NXP i.MX RT 1064 EVK, STM32 H750B-DK, STM32 F469i-disco, STM32 L4R9i-disco, and STM32 L4R9i-eval
Asset management
- Optional PNG compressions for assets to lower storage footprint
- Option to read data directly from flash memory for lower RAM consumption, or copy to RAM for better performance, at the cost of higher RAM consumption.
FreeRTOS support (technology preview) to run background tasks without blocking the Qt Quick user interface
Qt Charts for MCUs (technology preview) enabling bar charts support

You’ll find a longer list of changes – new features and bug fixes – on Qt documentation website. If you own any of the supported boards, you can give it a try by selecting Qt for MCUs 1.1 in the Qt installer.

Not directly related to Qt for MCUs, but earlier this month, the company also shared Qt roadmap for 2020 which includes the following:

May 2020
- Qt Design Studio 1.5 with unified 2D and 3D design tools
- Qt 5.15 LTS with Qt Quick 3D and Rendering Hardware Interface (RHI) supporting Metal and Vulkan APIs; 3-year support for commercial license holders
End of 2020 – Qt 6.0 release with many new features and changes such as “next-generation QML”, RHI graphics API improvements, etc…

Finally, If you are interested in Qt solutions, the Qt Virtual Tech Con 2020 will take on May 12-13 and is free to attend.

Thanks to Andreas for the tip.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.