Hi,
We have a system as below and we have proved that the whole design works fine with TouchGFX framework.
However, we are now evaluating if touchGFX is really sufficient for our full requirements. are there any known limitation with touchGFX ? from the forums following are the findings.
1. TouchGFX may not be suitable for advanced graphics like image rotations more than 90 degrees.
2. TouchGFX may not be suitable for 3D graphics, however some basic animations can be achieved via Texture mapping.
3. TouchGFX do no support audio.
However, I am not sure about the following
4. Rendering google maps or any maps for real time assert tracking, I could not find any example or thread discussing this.
5. support for h/w keys to control menu and screen ? this is one of the key requirement for our design as the design will be based on hardware buttons/keys( upto 8 ). this product will not have touch screen.
can you please help ? also any confirmation on map rendering will really help to speed up our design decision.
thanks
Sri
Hello @srig ,
Regarding your question :
1. TouchGFX may not be suitable for advanced graphics like image rotations more than 90 degrees.
TouchGFX can rotate an image to 20° as well as it can rotate it to 91°, 125° or others.
However, TouchGFX is limited in rotating the display or the framebuffer (if you want the whole screen to be rotated) because this is something that should be done at hardware (display) level.
2. TouchGFX may not be suitable for 3D graphics, however some basic animations can be achieved via Texture mapping.
Since TouchGFX is targeted at embedded devices and specifically MCU, it need to keep in mind the restrictions of embedded design such as memory and computation power, therefore, TouchGFX is more suited for 2D designs.
If you want to do 3D designs, you should look at the MPU product line from STMicroelecronics which are more powerful and can run a "standard" OS (Yocto Linux) capable of rendering 3D graphics natively.
Also note that the more recent chips such as the STM35U5G9 have neoChrom which allows you to do advanced graphics such as texture mapper, SVG , gradients, etc, here is a demo .
3. TouchGFX do no support audio.
Indeed, TouchGFX does not support audio.
Usually, audio is handled by connecting a speaker (ex : through I2C), using a standard audio codec and synchronizing the start of your audio with the start of your video (or whatever else) using the MVP architecture.
So even thought it is not handled by TouchGFX, it is easy to make it work.
4. Rendering google maps or any maps for real time assert tracking, I could not find any example or thread discussing this.
TouchGFX does not support map natively. We have not spent the time to research the feasibility of it nor to create an example.
If you have a custom map with a limited area, this would be possible for sure as you will just load the image (better if it is an SVG to save memory) when flashing your chip.
But if you want to be able to render the whole world (ex : Google map clone), you would be better off using an MPU.
5. support for h/w keys to control menu and screen ? this is one of the key requirement for our design as the design will be based on hardware buttons/keys( upto 8 ). this product will not have touch screen.
TouchGFX does not support hardware keys natively because it is meant to be handled by the main.c.
It is very easy to interface hardware keys using STM32 and TouchGFX.
You can look at some of our TBS (TouchGFX Board Setup) such as the ones using the GFX01 display that are not touch and therefore use a joystick to interface :
To summarize:
If you want to have an amazing looking GUI with 3D rendering and unlimited map area, you should look at an ST Microelectronics MPU .
If you want to create a GUI optimized for embedded devices with good looking 2D assets and a finite map area TouchGFX is suitable.
Regards,
