STMicroelectronics TouchGFX Version 4.18 GUI tool for STM32 microcontrollers

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STMicroelectronics has released TouchGFX Version 4.18 of its free GUI tool for user-interface development with STM32 microcontrollers (MCUs), adding video playback, enhanced tools for multi-developer collaboration and support for X-NUCLEO display kits.

Allowing playback of Motion-JPEG (MJPEG) video files, the software can be used with small devices like home-automation products, wearables, medical devices and industrial sensors, allowing rich features such as instructional guides or entertaining startup and pause screens to enhance the user interface. Developers can use their own MJPEG files or choose from the sample movies provided. A video widget in TouchGFX Designer, with properties including start, stop, repeat and go-to-frame, helps simplify prototyping and is added to the application by drag and drop.

The product allows video decoding in either software or hardware. Hardware decoding is possible with STM32 MCUs that contain a suitable decoding peripheral, such as the STM32F769 and STM32H7B3. Software decoding is available on all series devices except the STM32G0 series. Various strategies for video buffering, including direct rendering to the frame buffer and double buffering, help optimise memory demand and performance.

Additional features include enhanced support for collaborative working, using XML to store text data and translations. XML simplifies sharing and merging various elements of the project as multiple team members contribute. Features from previous TouchGFX versions are retained, including the partial frame buffer for low RAM use, ultra-efficient rendering that prevents tearing effects and support for non-memory-mapped SPI Flash.

For an easy start to GUI development projects, the tool comes with examples showing how to use the video capabilities and the necessary TouchGFX Board Setup (TBS) for STM32 Discovery boards.

For more information: https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/ecosystems/stm32-graphic-user-interface.html.