Deploying Felgo Apps to Embedded Devices

Overview

Felgo allows local development and deployment for Embedded targets. Felgo targets Embedded devices with cross-compilation, meaning that you write and compile your code on your local development PC and then deploying applications to the Embedded device. This allows you to run the very same app from a single source code on Desktop, mobile, the Web and Embedded.

The Felgo packages for Embedded targets are available on request. Contact us to get the packages and setup instructions for your device.

Supported Platforms

Felgo for Embedded supports a variety of hardware target devices that are known to work well with Qt for Device Creation, including NXP i.MX6, i.MX7 & i.MX8 boards from Toradex, Ginzinger & others, Intel NUC, NVIDIA Tegra platform, Qualcomm Snapdragon platform, Raspberry & Arduino boards, and more.

Raspberry Pi

Felgo supports Raspberry Pi as Embedded Linux target platform. Libraries for the Raspberry Pi (target) and Linux (host) are available on request for Felgo customers on a paid plan, contact us. For other hosts and embedded devices, see Other Platforms.

Other Platforms

Support for other Embedded devices is available upon request in the Felgo Business Plan.

Raspberry Pi

Setup Raspberry Pi

You need a Raspberry Pi, an SD Card (8GB or more), a power cable and peripherals of your preference (mouse/keyboard/ethernet cable/HDMI cable).

Felgo recommends using Raspberry OS (former Raspbian) as the operating system on your Raspberry device. It is the officially endorsed operating system by the company behind the Pi and at the same time the most popular & stable OS for Raspberry Pi.

To install Raspberry OS, follow these steps:

• Download Raspberry OS from https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/operating-systems/. You can select any of the offered download options, note that Lite doesn't have a traditional UI shell included.
• Unpack the archive and flash the image to your SD Card. You can find more information at the official guide.
• Insert the SD Card in the Raspberry Pi and plug in peripherals & power.
• At first boot, wait until the setup process completes and then login. The default login is: username pi and password raspberry.

After installation, the flashed Raspberry Pi needs to be configured so that it can be remote-controlled over the network (i.e., by Qt Creator or your PC's terminal software). To do so, follow these steps:

• Open a terminal on the Raspberry Pi and type the command sudo raspi-config
• Select the following options (you may change other options according to your needs):

   --- Enable SSH - Secure Shell / remote control (mandatory)
   Interface Options   -> SSH               -> YES/Enable
  
   --- Increase GPU Memory (mandatory)
   Performance Options -> GPU Memory        -> 256
  
   --- Enable Audio output over 3.5mm (recommended)
   System Options      -> Audio             -> Headphones
  
   --- Enable auto login on the Pi itself (recommended)
   System Options      -> Boot / Auto Login -> Desktop Autologin/Console Autologin

• Finally, restart your device.

Felgo SDK for Raspberry Pi

The Felgo packages for Raspberry Pi are available on request for Felgo customers on a paid plan. Contact us to get the packages and the instructions to build and run your application on the Pi.

Notes about Felgo for Raspberry Pi

• For proper hardware acceleration, the application needs to be executed with the EGLFS platform plugin.

  If an X server is running (default in the "Desktop" Raspberry OS images), the "xcb" platform plugin will get loaded.

  If there is no X server running (default in the "Lite" Raspberry OS image), start the application with EGLFS. You can specify the platform plugin with the -platform eglfs command line argument or the QT_QPA_PLATFORM=eglfs environment variable.

• Video playback requires hardware acceleration.
• Audio playback requires a running PulseAudio server. On Raspbian OS "Desktop images" downloaded after December 2020, PulseAudio is pre-configured.