i.MX 7 reference platform

The following article explains all necessary steps to create an Embedded Wizard UI application for i.MX 7 using OpenGL ES 2.0 and Wayland. The Embedded Wizard GUI applications are executable on i.MX 7 reference platforms, containing one of the following i.MX 7 application processors:

First, make sure you have all of the following items:

Download and study the latest i.MX Yocto Project User's Guide. This guide describes all necessary steps to build a suitable System Image and SDK for a dedicated i.MX 7 reference platform.

These are roughly the steps that have to be done:

Prepare your i.MX 7 reference platform (target):

As a result, the i.MX 7 target should boot up using the Linux system from the SD card. It should be observable on console (COM port). Log in as root (without password) via COM console and determine the IP address of your target (e.g. using ifconfig).

In principle, the same Linux host can be used that was already used for the YOCTO build. Alternatively, a virtual machine with a Linux operating system on your PC is also possible.

The provided Embedded Wizard Build Environment for IMX7-OpenGL-Wayland contains everything you need to create, compile and link an Embedded Wizard UI application for the i.MX 7 target. After unpacking, you will find the following subdirectories and files:

For the first bring up of your system, we recommend to use the example 'HelloWorld':

Example 'HelloWorld' within Embedded Wizard Studio.

The following steps are necessary to generate the source code of this sample application:

The following steps are necessary to build the Embedded Wizard UI sample application using the cross-compiler on your Linux build system:

The resulting binary of the application EmbeddedWizard-Linux-OpenGL-Wayland will be stored in the current directory.

Example 'HelloWorld' running on i.MX 7 target.

All other examples can be created in the same way: Just open the desired example with Embedded Wizard Studio, generate code, rebuild the application and download it to the target.

In order to create your own UI project suitable for the i.MX 7 target, you can create a new project and select the Linux OpenGL project template:

As a result you get a new Embedded Wizard project, that contains the necessary Profile attributes suitable for the i.MX 7 target:

The following profile settings are important for your target:

Now you can use the template project in the same manner as it was used for the provided examples to compile and link the binary.

After generating code, just build and execute your GUI application in the same way as described above.

Project settings related to the GUI application are taken directly out of the generated code - all other settings can be made directly within the file ewconfig.h, which contains general configuration settings for the target system.

The SSH client is very helpful to receive error messages or to display simple debug or trace messages from your Embedded Wizard UI application.

During a successful application startup, the console displays the following information:

It can be used for all trace statements from your Embedded Wizard UI applications or for all debug messages from your C code.

If you just want to run our GUI demos on your i.MX 7 target without building the different examples, you can simply start the binary file of the Embedded Wizard Master Demo.

The Embedded Wizard Master Demo combines a variety of examples within one huge demo application. It can be used for presentations and showcases. Each demo application can be activated from a common main menu. To return back from a demo application to the main menu, a small home button appears on top of every demo. Additionally, the Master Demo contains an auto-demo mode that presents one demo application after the other. The auto-demo starts automatically and stops as soon as the user touches the screen.

In order to copy the binary file to your target, please follow these steps:

This is the resulting application on a i.MX 7 target:

'Master Demo' running on i.MX 7 target.

The following section contains the version history of the Build Environment (including Graphics Engine and Runtime Environment) for i.MX 7 with OpenGL and Wayland (IMX7-OpenGL-Wayland). These release notes describe only the platform specific aspects - for all general improvements and enhancements please see the Embedded Wizard release notes.