Microchip’s “Tightly Coupled” GUI Tools Provide Embedded Developers With a Superior Graphics Experience

Third-Party Tools Carry Risk

Unfortunately, the creators of many of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) design tools that accompany embedded development boards, including those for microcontrollers (MCUs) as well as for microprocessors (MPUs) have not followed Einstein’s advice. This means that for chip manufacturers, using graphics tools supplied by a third-party provider has become an inefficient approach that runs the risk of causing unwanted bugs in application code as well as undesirable increases in costs for licensing and royalties. Some GUI development paradigms require the use of three different tools—a screen designer, image asset manager and font asset manager—all of which reside outside of the chip manufacturer’s central design and debug tool set. While each tool generates code for its specific function, they are not designed in a way to allow easy integration with the other tools. The task of incorporating code from multiple tools and then compiling and debugging in the home environment is manually intensive, time-consuming and risk laden. The highly iterative nature of embedded software development multiplies the time consumed both in development and debugging in this scenario.

Tightly Coupled Tools

By contrast, Microchip has designed its MPLAB® Harmony Graphics Composer (MHGC) and MPLAB Harmony software framework to be a tightly coupled development environment.

The MPLAB Harmony Graphics library has been designed to support most Microchip 32-bit MCUs and all Microchip MPUs, meaning it can be used right across the product line, even those with specialized features like a graphics accelerator. This approach to developing robust and reusable code can be used with multiple platforms to improve design efficiency and reducing overall development costs. It also affords greater flexibility in choice because the same design tools and libraries can be used all along the performance continuum, from inexpensive Arm® Cortex®-M0 MCUs to mighty Cortex-A5-based MPUs.

The term “tightly coupled” is intended to convey a high level of integration with the ability to access and control software between tools within the environment. For instance, MHGC tools can integrate touch services and events using a GUI, then deposit all the code into the MPLAB Harmony software framework with MPLAB X Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for seamless, ongoing development and support.

MHGC is built to work within the MPLAB X IDE and directly with MPLAB Harmony software framework to automatically generate screen, image and font code that is fully integrated with MPLAB Harmony drivers and middleware libraries. This approach supports an enhanced, interactive development cycle where design and debug can be focused on creating application-specific code and reducing time to market.

Getting Up and Running

Getting started is very straightforward. Visit the MPLAB Harmony page to learn more about Microchip’s amazing software development framework and find links to download the software for free and to find associated documentation, training materials and other helpful information. You must also download and install of the MPLAB X IDE. To learn more about how the MPLAB Harmony Graphics Composer tool suites can help you create GUIs efficiently and accurately, watch these two helpful videos:

Microchip Minutes MPLAB® Harmony Edition—Episode 7: MPLAB Harmony Graphics Composer Suite

Microchip Minutes MPLAB® Harmony Edition—Episode 9: MPLAB Harmony Graphics Composer (Getting Started)

To help speed up your project development, several development tools are also available, including the PIC32MZ DA Curiosity Development Board (EV87D54A) and the Integrated Graphics and Touch Development Kit. These tools provide you with the fastest way to apply attractive and sophisticated GUI designs to the highest-performance, graphics-enabled MCU from Microchip.