Flash is probably the most powerful cross-platform HMI development tool available today. QNX supports Adobe’s latest embedded offering, Adobe Flash Lite 4, which opens up availability to the latest and greatest Flash applications and content.

QNX Software Systems has ported the Adobe Flash engine, and added a number of optimizations for best performance in embedded environments, like:

• OpenVG hardware acceleration of rendering
• Fast scrolling and off-screen bitblit management
• Video codec hardware acceleration

Programming features support

• Runs Flash content developed for Flash 10 or earlier
• ActionScript version 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0
• XML — sockets, parsing, string/array/XML-to-native-objects conversion
• Video smoothing and de-blocking

Multimedia support

• PCM and ADPCM
• Embedded MP3 support
• Dynamic loading of multimedia files using external codec support

Image and video support

• PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, SGI, TGA, animated GIF (during authoring)
• Flash video (FLV) using On2 or Sorenson codecs

Flash Lite features

• Access to device-specific features through private messaging services
• Reduced runtime memory consumption
• Graceful handling of out-of-memory conditions

Other features

• X-ray debugging support
• Caurina tweener library for optimized ActionScript tweening
• SWF file compression
• Extension API for native code implementation of ActionScript classes
• Unicode support

The application framework is a set of ActionScript 3 (AS3) classes that expand on the capabilities provided by Flash. It enables rapid development of consistent-behaving applications by providing a breadth of application services and a complete application runtime environment.

The application framework adds the following capabilities to the Adobe Flash engine:

• Application lifecycle management
• Application data persistence
• Status bars, navigation bars, icon badging, wall paper
• Screen layout and resizing management
• Specialized widgets like scroll lists, soft keyboards, and dialogs
• Interfaces to underlying HMI and OS services
• Extensions for accessing native code

HTML5 embodies Web 2.0: it extends normal static HTML support with all the tools necessary to build dynamic full-fledged applications within a web page. QNX uses an up-to-date port of Webkit which supports many of the currently proposed HTML5 features.

Extensions such as JNEXT are used to bridge the gap between JavaScript and the native world, allowing development of HTML embedded applications that can interact with resources outside the browser. The HTML5 rendering engine can be used as a browser with the browser application, or can be included into applications that require display of HTML5 content.

Form

Elements

Attributes

Specifications

The Composition manager provided with the QNX Neutrino RTOS allows developers to merge the output of multiple windows and processes (Flash, native code applications, browsers) on to a single display — even with lower cost graphics controllers that don’t support hardware layering.

This Composition Manager supports hardware display layers and software-emulated display layers, and enables the easy creation of transparency holes in video and flash content.

The QNX composition manager provides support for applications to control the composition of subprocess windows, such as a surrounding HMI window that controls a contained browser or 3D virtualization application. Various transforms can be applied to the subprocess windows, including moving, scaling up/down, rotating, and transparency effects.

Drawing simple 2D graphics is provided through several powerful APIs:

• OpenVG
• SKIA
• GF (QNX specific)

Drawing 3D objects is provided through an OpenGL ES API.

QNX Software Systems supports video codec playback, which is important for playing back canned video files, multimedia, streaming IP video feeds, and DVDs.

Video formats supported include MPEG-4, MPEG-2, H.264, H.263, DVD-V navigator, and Flash specific formats On2 and Sorenson.

QNX Software Systems provides stacks that are appropriate for each vertical market, such as Automotive or Industrial.

These stacks provide pre-integrated technologies that allow full-featured systems to be put together readily.

Automotive

The QNX CAR Application Platform builds on QNX HMI technology to add automotive infotainment features, like the Virtual Mechanic, Google local search, voice recognition, climate control, audio system control, and dealer appointment scheduling. The same technology in QNX CAR also enables the LTE Connected CAR that QNX built with Alcatel-Lucent as part of ng Connect.

Industrial

The QNX Smart Energy Reference Design shows how to create a smart-looking home energy panel that can give homeowners complete control of their home and its energy use, using home area networks, Zigbee sensors, and streaming IP video along with a connection to the Internet and the utility company.

Futures

QNX Software Systems is always considering additional vertical stack customizations to expand the range of HMI solutions into other markets. The most recent developments will always be found on Foundry27.com.

QNX provides two fundamental methods for accessing native code.

Persistent Publish/Subscribe (PPS)

The persistent publish/subscribe provides a mechanism to asynchronously connect C/C++ services to HMI code in ActionScript (Flash) or JavaScript (HTML5). PPS publishers provide an interface to the rest of the system through a hierarchical POSIX namespace. Interface components are provided in each HMI environment to allow subscription to PPS services.

PPS has the following characteristics:

• Object attributes— PPS publishes objects which are composed of multiple attributes, which can be independently updated.
• Delta mode— Changes to PPS objects can be received in full (the subscriber gets all writes to an object) or by deltas (the subscriber only gets notified when attributes change value).
• Multiple publishers to the same object— Multiple publishers can publish to the same PPS object, and each publisher can “own” a different set of attributes of the object. In a multimedia system, for instance, one component may be the source of a “time::value” attribute, while the HMI may be the source of a “duration::value” attribute.
• Multiple subscribers— PPS clients can subscribe to multiple objects and PPS objects can have multiple subscribers. When a publisher changes an object, all clients subscribed to that object are informed of the change.
• Push and pull— By default, QNX PPS functions as a push publishing system. But it also allows a subscriber to pull data from a publisher, so that publishing occurs on demand.
• Reliable storage— PPS objects can be persisted on an attribute by attribute basis.

Native Extensions

QNX provides methods for HMI environments to load and directly call into user provided C/C++ shared objects. For Flash, this is provided through ActionScript Extensions (ASE); HTML5 uses JNEXT. In either environment, you define an interface class in the scripting language, and provide an implementation of that class in C or C++. Calls from the scripting engine will then be bridged into native C/C++ code, allowing access to hardware resources, threading, OS primitives, OS services, and middleware components.