As LCD panels are becoming less and less expensive, graphical UI is more often used in embedded devices. In developing the UI, the most appropriate GUI development tool is chosen by each user out of a wide variety of them.
However, once you actually start the development, you will run into a brick wall when installing a GUI created with those development tools into an embedded device, wondering how to connect to an MCU project. This is going to be an obstacle to creating POC quickly and so on.
To resolve this issue, Renesas provides a mechanism to consistently support operations from MCU project creation to GUI development, by using a development environment, "e2studio", collaborating with "emWin", a GUI development tool provided cost free for the RX MCUs by Segger.
First of all, let’s install “e2studio”.
Together with this, install “QE for Display” or a plug-in for GUI development, too. This can be also installed by downloading from the Web. This will complete all the preparations for the development environment.
Then, let’s create a project and install a device driver into a download project in the same way as the ordinary embedded device development. This is also automatically installed, which has become very convenient, hasn’t it?
Now, go into the main subject of calling the “QE for Display” plug-in. This window supports all the processes from installing a GUI development tool, “emWin”, setting installation into a project, to reflecting an edited GUI to a project. Since all you have to do is operate following a guide, installation is easily completed without reading so many pages of a manual. A video showing the actual operation is available. Please refer to it, too.
In “QE for Display”, you can not only perform settings with a typical evaluation board with LCD such as RX72N Envision Kit provided by Renesas as preset but also tune timing settings in real time to an LCD panel prepared by the user, while displaying it on an actual panel. Try this, together.
How did you like it? Since the MCU project alone enables consistent GUI development, you can start up POC creation and so on quickly.
As development utilizing a business ecosystem has become common these days, we will continue to provide the RX family products by making them more user-friendly and building a closely united mechanism!
Additional Resources
Tutorial video for QE for Display
QE for Display: Development Assistance Tool for Display Applications
Graphical User Interface (GUI) Solutions for RX MCUs