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HMI frameworks or browser

In addition to hardware development, software development is also one of our core competencies

HMI frameworks or browser

Graphics Frameworks

As soon as a display is to be used in an embedded device such as our DHMI, the question of the right graphics framework arises. As there are a wide variety of frameworks, we have compared three relevant examples here and highlighted the advantages and disadvantages.

  • License costs free and open source
  • Low hardware requirements, GPU usage optional
  • Existing Yocto integration
  • Not the same graphical performance as Qt or Flutter
  • Market leader
  • GPU is required for good performance.
  • Existing Yocto integration
  • Existing user base with support forum
  • License costs to get decent LTS support
  • License costs free and open source
  • Cross-platform portability (Android/Linux/OSX/...)
  • Large user base
  • Useful documentation and examples supported by Google
  • Requires powerful hardware (CPU and GPU)
  • Yocto integration of meta-flutter is currently not optimal

WebKit vs. Chromium

WPEWebkit is a port of the Webkit browser engine used by Safari and specialized for embedded Linux. Cog is a lightweight Lanucher for WPEWebkit and comes with WPEWebkit. Chromium, on the other hand, is the open-source version of Google Chrome and almost all popular browsers such as Edge, Opera and Brave use Chromium as their base. In the following, we would like to highlight some of the advantages and disadvantages of the two web browsers for embedded systems.

Benefits of WPEWebKit

  • Optimized for embedded devices with weaker hardware
  • Very lightweight (less memory required in the final image)
  • Good integration in Yocto/OpenEmbedded
  • Compatible with many web frameworks (substructure of Safari)

Disadvantages of WPEWebKit

  • Only kiosk mode available for Cog without GUI for navigation
  • Moderate use of multicore
You can find the corresponding Yocto layer from Webkit here

Advantages of Chromium

  • Chromium based browsers dominate the browser market
  • Very good compatibility with many web frameworks
  • Good handling of multicore

Disadvantages of Chromium

  • Resource-intensive due to lack of optimization for embedded systems
  • The integration in Yocto/Openembedded and the implementation of updates are complex
You can find the corresponding Yocto layer of Chromium here
Here you can find our DHMI standard products
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