Design tool for GUIs on PICs

17 April 2013 Design Automation

Microchip announced the release of Graphics Display Designer X (GDD X), a visual design tool that provides a quick and easy way of creating Graphical User Interface (GUI) screens for applications using Microchip’s 16- or 32-bit PIC MCUs. With GDD X, developers have the freedom to work in the environment of their choice, including Windows, Linux or Mac OS operating systems.

Graphical user interfaces are found in a wide range of products today, from coffee makers to automotive dashboards. While the requirement is becoming commonplace, Microchip believes there is a lack of cost-effective tools available to the developer.

Placing dialogue boxes, guidance text, buttons, sliders, dials and other elements of a GUI, while determining colours and calculating x/y coordinates, can be very time consuming. GDD X enables the development of GUIs in a ‘what you see is what you get’ (WYSIWYG) environment, and saves valuable design time by automatically generating the C code needed for the user interface.

With GDD X, a highly effective GUI can be created to improve the customer experience for applications such as automotive numeric, gauge or infotainment displays; industrial interfaces such as operator touch screens; home appliances including coffee makers, refrigerators, cooker tops and microwave ovens; consumer electronics such as home automation, alarms and learning toys; and medical bedside monitoring or lab analysis equipment.

GDD X enables development using Microchip’s Graphics Library, and can be used as a standalone tool or as a plug-in to Microchip’s free MPLAB X Integrated Development Environment (IDE). It allows the creation of a project with configurable display resolution, and imports all the required driver/board support files into MPLAB X. Generated code can be compiled and tested on hardware.

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