Embedded Programming for Raspberry Pi with Fast boot

Question

I'm a computer engineer student and I'am having problems with my new project:

• A small screen that show car information and such. A reeeeeally simple version of a carputer.

It's been 1 month with my Raspberry pi and I can't find a solution for my main problem: A simple linux distro with really fast boot and the possibility to develop applications with graphical interfaces

My main evolutions on my project were:

• I tried Arch Linux for a while. But 20 seconds boot is not fast enough. And I can't get any graphical interface running properly
• I tried RPi-Buildroot from Gamaral. Which is a really nice version of buildroot designed for raspberry pi. 3 seconds of boot is really amazing to see. But I couldn't manage to get anything other than a "Hello, World" using it's Cross Compiling. (RPi-BuildRoot link on Github)

I just need a direction to what I need to do to get this working. If I get a simple user interface starting with less than 10 seconds I can consider my project done.

I think that the RPi-BuildRoot is a Great tool that I am not finding a way through it...

Thank you! And sorry for poor english ;)

Bunche

What have you done to get your application to cross-compile using RPi-Buildroot? (I've only used regular upstream buildroot). It shouldn't be that hard to get a simple application building using buildroot. – Quartana

For what I've been reading lately, if you are using a regular upstream buildroot you have to create a toolchain (set of files that allow you to cross-compile, like gcc, g++, qmake, ... specific for the build that you created), after that, you will use the gcc that is located on your toolchain, compile it and send it to your raspberry pi. Which will only execute the application. There are applications that create the toolchain for you. But I don't know which or how it works. - I hope that this helped – Bunche

Sure, often you let buildroot build the toolchain, though you can use an external toolchain of you like. However, I was more interested in what issues do you have when compiling your own application using buildroot (or rpi-buildroot). Add long as you have enabled all libraries you need, it shouldn't be that hard to build your own application. – Quartana

Answer 1

rpi-buildroot gives you a really basic default configuration. It already gives you the OpenGL library, but you have to configure it to add anything more.

So after building the first time, do

make xconfig

and navigate through it to find the graphical libraries that you want to use. For instance, you can enable qt5 and qt5declarative in the Graphic libraries and applications menu, and then you get QML. See the buildroot documentation and QML documentation

Binah

Answer 2

I managed to make it work, after 2 weeks of intensive testing. Here is my video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjjET56Ct3w

I will write an article about this. The final result is programmed in python with pyGame module - very easy to program. I will use it for an automotive project.

Mohan

That looks fast. Don't forget to add the link to the article after you will have it. Will be waiting for it – Myrtlemyrvyn