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QMX software development #qmx

 


Hans -?

I was impressed by the number of issues addressed by the latest release of the QMX firmware. As a former developer, this led me to wonder how you're doing the development. If it's not telling too much (I know that your code is proprietary) - what tools are you using? Language(s), IDE, toolchain? With the progress you're making it doesn't seem you have to fight with your development system.

Thanks,
John KI3J
 

Hello John

Yes I'm not fighting the dev tools. Just fighting myself and my own bugs.?

I use ST's CubeMX for initial project set-up, then Atollic TrueStudio as my IDE. Just because I'm used to it for quite some years now. Subsequently ST purchased Atollic and turned it into their own ST IDE but I keep using the older version on an if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it basis. The backend compiler is GCC. I use the ST HAL libraries and ARM CMSIS DSP libraries to some extent. The code is all in C. I don't use any other libraries such as for the LCD, menu handling, audio etc., I wrote all that from scratch.?

How I got started on ST... when I was living in Tokyo, and my daughter was a little under 2 years old (now 10), she went to a ballet school on Saturday mornings. There was a playground park nearby and afterwards I was pushing her on the swing, and next to me was an Italian pushing his two half-Japanese twin daughters also. We got chatting about how tiring it was pushing little daughters endlessly on swings who never ever got tired no matter how many times back and forth they went. It turned out he was the boss of ST Japan, and of course I was telling him about my?growing QRP Labs activity,?at that?time still run?out of my bedroom closet lab (5 x 4 feet, 150 x 120cm only - 1.8 sq meters,?picture attached). The chairman of our radio club? also worked for ST. At the next monthly TIARA meeting Fumi-San brought along a whole bunch of ST Dev boards for me to play with, sent by the ST Japan head!?

I mention this because the final part of my toolchain is an ST Nucleo eval board that I use for its STLink2 part, which is the SWD programmer interface that I download the code into the QMX with :-)? ? My colleague who flashes all the bootloaders into QDX, QMX and the other ST-based products uses a similar eval board's?STLink2 section, and STCubeProgrammer tool.?

We all use Linux and all these tools run on Linux fine.?

73 Hans G0UPL


On Fri, Feb 9, 2024, 11:27?PM john.christopher2 via <john.christopher2=[email protected]> wrote:


Hans -?

I was impressed by the number of issues addressed by the latest release of the QMX firmware. As a former developer, this led me to wonder how you're doing the development. If it's not telling too much (I know that your code is proprietary) - what tools are you using? Language(s), IDE, toolchain? With the progress you're making it doesn't seem you have to fight with your development system.

Thanks,
John KI3J

 

Hans -

Thanks very much for the very detailed reply.?

C is probably a language that will never die. Even though it's now considered a dangerous language (arbitrary pointers!) you can't beat it for how directly it translates to the underlying hardware.

I was also happy when you took that skiing break - after you released v 14 for the QMX I was getting concerned that you were pushing yourself too hard.


Thanks and 73
John KI3J
 

Hi John
?
Thanks very much for the very detailed reply.?

C is probably a language that will never die. Even though it's now considered a dangerous language (arbitrary pointers!) you can't beat it for how directly it translates to the underlying hardware.

"Dangerous" is considerably mitigated by good discipline. C produces very slick code, compact, fast, and generally perfect for embedded systems where resources are less constrained. Don't get me on one of my favorite soap boxes - the fact that I walked into a computer store 2 years ago and asked which was their most expensive, fastest Motherboard and bought it without any questions?- and yet it runs Windows slower than my 2005 vintage Win XP laptop.?

Moore was a clever chap and Moore's law held for hardware? but the software got correspondingly so bloated so that much of Moore's law got effectively canceled out. In fact if you look at the daily tasks most of us do on a PC, they are not much different (nor faster) than what we did on '486 machines 30 years ago running Windows 3.1.?

In fact, given that our modern CPU's contain 10,000 more transistors than an Intel 486, but don't seem to give us much more functionality or run much faster for most of?us'es daily tasks, it makes software development look a little disappointing...?
?
I was also happy when you took that skiing break - after you released v 14 for the QMX I was getting concerned that you were pushing yourself too hard.

Oh no no no no, v14 was AGES ago! Don't worry :-/

FYI on the hardware side I use Eagle - now part of Fusion 360. It's not free anymore and not cheap,. something like $400 a year. But I am very quick on it. I think the time I would lose, trying to climb the learning curve on something free (I know everyone loves KiCad) would probably cost me more than many years of the annual Fusion 360 license.?

The "lab" contains 0-30V 0-5A adjustable supply, Owon XDS3102A 100MHz 12-bit dual channel 'scope, R3361C 9kHz-2.6GHz Spectrum Analyzer?+ tracking generator, Racal 9911 frequency counter (who doesn't love 7 segments) and Heathkit IB-1103 frequency counter with 8x nixie tubes (who doesn't crazily adore nixies). And all radios are QRP Labs or homebrew. No other radios...?
?
73 Hans G0UPL

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