Qt Automotive Suite - under the hood after one year of hacking. From the Qt World Summit 2017, Berlin, Germany. Qt Automotive Suite was released a year ago and development is making progress. This talk be focused on technical details of new features in the Qt Application Manager, the new plugin for Qt Creator, additions to Qt IVI, changes in Neptune UI, and even things we are not going to do and why. We will discuss how those features map to the needs we observe in ongoing projects and in the future ones.

1. Qt Automotive Suite
Under the hood after one year of hacking
Johan Thelin

2. Introduction
 Johan Thelin, System Architect at Luxoft
 Background: Qt Champion, Foundations of Qt
Development, QmlBook, Pelagicore, Nokia Qt
Development Frameworks
qmlbook.org

3. What’s in the Box?
 Core components (non UI)
 Qt Application Manager
 Qt IVI
 Qt GENIVI Extras
 Tools and best practices
 QmlLive
 GammaRay
 Integrations of QtAM in QtCreator

4. What’s in the Box?
 Neptune – An Automotive Reference UI
 Center stack
 Instrument Cluster
 AppStore
 Solutions to selected key issues in IVI
 Notifications prioritization
 Application life-cycle
 Security for deployment and execution

5. What’s left to do?
 Qt Automotive Suite provides a reference UI
 OEMs still have to provide
 Deep vehicle integration
 OEM specific features and extensions
 End-user available application distribution

6. Developers first!
 Our mission is to bring the Qt way to automotive
 Easy to get started
 Ease of development
 Great documentation
 All the tools you need at your fingertips

7. A Look at
the Past Year

8. Qt Application Manager at a Glance
 Wayland compositor
 Graphics
 Input
 Owns the Apps
 Installation, update, removal
 Start, pause, stop
 Run-time for the System UI

9. Qt Application Manager
Timing and fidelity
 StartTimer
 Start-up timing
 Support custom checkpoints
 Can be used for the System UI and Apps
 ProcessMonitor
 Frame rate
 Memory usage
 CPU load
 SystemMonitor
 Frame rate
 Memory rate
 CPU load
 # of CPUs
 Amount of memory

10. Qt Application Manager
• Notification Manager
• Prioritization
• Stickyness
• Actions
• Progress
• Time outs
• All still via
org.freedesktop.Notifications

11. Qt Application Manager
 Code base maintenance
 More usage of C++11
 nullptr
 Q_DECL_NOEXCEPT_EXPR(false)

12. Qt Application Manager

13. Neptune UI at a Glance
 Reference UI and demonstrator baseline
 System UI runs on Qt Application Manager
 A variety of Apps
 Settings
 Navigation
 Media
 Browser
 and so on

14. Neptune UI
• Most visible change is the WindowOverview page

15. WindowOverview Page
GridView {
model: ListModel {}
delegate: Item {
ShaderEffectSource {
anchors.fill: parent
anchors.margins: gridView.padding
sourceItem: model.item
}
}
Connections {
target: ApplicationManagerInterface
onApplicationSurfaceReady: {
...
gridView.model.append({ "item" : item })
}
onApplicationSurfaceLost: {
for (var i = 0; i < gridView.model.count; ++i) {
if (gridView.model.get(i).item === item)
gridView.model.remove(i);
}
}
}

16. WindowOverview Page
delegate: Item {
MouseArea {
anchors.fill: parent
onClicked: {
ApplicationManager.startApplication(ApplicationManagerInterface.appIdFromWindow(model.item))
root.close()
// Hide all other windows, otherwise the will be in the stack and switching doesn't work
for (var i = 0; i < gridView.model.count; ++i) {
var window = gridView.model.get(i).item
if (window !== model.item)
WindowManager.setWindowProperty(window, "visibility", false)
}
}
}
Tool {
onClicked: ApplicationManager.stopApplication(ApplicationManagerInterface.appIdFromWindow(model.item))
}
}

17. Taking it to the Next Level
• We are doing a face-lift of Neptune...
• ...both graphical and code wise
• New look and feel – still under development
• Qt Quick Controls 2
• Updated layout strategy

18. Qt IVI at a Glance
 Qt abstraction layer on top of the platform
services
 IPC agnostic, platform agnostic
 Dynamically loaded backends
 Dynamic bindings all the way
 Can interchange backends
 Allows for service discovery

19. Qt IVI – Code Generator with QFace
• Reference implementations of Media and VehicleFunctions
• Integration of QFace
• Code generator based on Qt aware IDL
• Jinja based code generators – very simply to extend
• Fully integrated in your qmake / cmake workflow
• Handwritten APIs for static APIs, e.g. media, tuner, bluetooth
• Generated APIs for volatile APIs, e.g. vehicle signals

20. File(s)Generator(s)
Qt IVI - QFace
IDL Model Generator(s) Source file(s)
QFace

21. Qt IVI - QFace
• IDL supports
• Interfaces
• Data types, structs, enums, etc
• Annotations – meta-data for the generators
• Jinja based generators
• Used for Python web frameworks
• Lets you traverse the model
• Very easy to write custom generators
System
Module
Import Interface
Property
Operation
Event
Enum Flag Struct
Property

22. QML Live
• Live reloader with server/client architecture
• Very quick turn-around time for developers and designers
• Many contributions from Jolla
• Extraction of core to lib
• Many bugs squashed
• Lost dependencies on widgets

23. More...
• Qt
• GammaRay
• Qt GENIVI Extras module

24. Where are we heading?
 Updated Neptune UI
 Redesigned
 Qt Quick Controls 2
 Qt3D for vehicle visualizations
 Integration of Squish
 A new Instrument Cluster
 Qt IVI
 More APIs
 Refactoring VehicleSettings to use QFace
 Enhanched Emulator support
 More how-to documentation

25. Where to get it?
qt.io pelux.iogenivi.org

26. Thank you for your attention!
jthelin@luxoft.com