An embedded lightweight GUI component library and ergonomics optimization method for industry process monitoring

Abstract

Developing an efficient and robust lightweight graphic user interface (GUI) for industry process monitoring is always a challenging task. Current implementation methods for embedded GUI are with the matters of real-time processing and ergonomics performance. To address the issue, an embedded lightweight GUI component library design method based on quasar technology embedded (Qt/E) is proposed. First, an entity-relationship (E-R) model for the GUI library is developed to define the functional framework and data coupling relations. Second, a cross-compilation environment is constructed, and the Qt/E shared library files are tailored to satisfy the requirements of embedded target systems. Third, by using the signal-slot communication interfaces, a message mapping mechanism that does not require a call-back pointer is developed, and the context switching performance is improved. According to the multi-thread method, the parallel task processing capabilities for data collection, calculation, and display are enhanced, and the real-time performance and robustness are guaranteed. Finally, the human-computer interaction process is optimized by a scrolling page method, and the ergonomics performance is verified by the industrial psychology methods. Two numerical cases and five industrial experiments show that the proposed method can increase real-time read-write correction ratios by more than 26% and 29%, compared with Windows-CE-GUI and Android-GUI, respectively. The component library can be tailored to 900 KB and supports 12 hardware platforms. The average session switch time can be controlled within 0.6 s and six key indexes for ergonomics are verified by different industrial applications.

Keywords

Embedded lightweight graphic user interface (GUI) / Quasar technology embedded (Qt/E) / Industry process moni-toring / Multi-thread / Ergonomics performance

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2018 Zhejiang University and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature