DDevelopment & Design

Running Qt4 Examples on Embedded Linux using ARM emulator

In this article I will show how to run Qt4-Embedded Examples on Angstrom Linux using QEMU. The procedure doesn’t require any compilation or cross compilation. It uses Angstrom Linux precompiled packages, online image builder, and works both on Windows and Linux. Qt4 Embedded allows to run Qt applications directly in Linux Framebuffer, bypassing X Windows completely. This is especially important during embedded development, because it allows to save a lot of memory and start up time. Qt4 has a rich set of examples directly embedded into Qt sources. Below is a few samples of how it looks like:

I will show how to run them. First, you need to install QEMU. For Windows, the easiest way is to download zipped executables, which I shared here:

Qemu-windows-0151. For Linux it’s usually apt-get install qemu-system. Then, we need to build Angstrom image. For those unpatient, I shared a prebuilt image here: angstrom-qt4-embedded. Angstrom has online image builder available here: Angstrom Image Builder. You need to pick console image and download it. The small trick is that you need to download kernel image yourself (from here: kernel-image-2.6.37.2_2.6.37-r4.6_qemuarm.ipk) and unpack it using ar -x kernel-image.ipk command. This is because online image builder doesn’t include kernel image for some reason. However this step is not required if you download the image I shared. Next, you need to start QEMU using kernel image and prebuilt angstrom image. The command looks like this: qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -usb -usbdevice wacom-tablet -show-cursor -m 64 -kernel zImage-2.6.37.2 -hda disk.img -append “root=/dev/sda2 rw” For convenience, I prepared run script, which does that. Next, you need to login as root and install qt4-embedded using command: opkg install qt4-embedded. This can be again skipped if you use the image I prepared. In order to run demos, you need to use this command: qtdemoE -qws It looks like this:

You can run the other examples from Qt, in standalone mode from

/usr/bin/qtopia directory. You need to use similar command app -qws. The command is required to initialize Qt framebuffer. It is possible to run a few executables on the same display. In order to do this, you need to run the first one only with qws parameter. The other apps will connect to it. Have fun!

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DDevelopment & Design

Need to make a quick json fixes – JSONPath for rescue

From time to time I have a need to do some fixes in my json data. In a world of flat files I do this with grep/sed/awk tool chain. How to handle it for JSON? Searching for a solution I came across the JSONPath. It quite mature tool (from 2007) but I haven't hear about it so I decided to share my experience with others.

First of all you can try it without pain online: http://jsonpath.curiousconcept.com/. Full syntax is described at http://goessner.net/articles/JsonPath/



But also you can download python binding and run it from command line:
$ sudo apt-get install python-jsonpath-rw
$ sudo apt-get install python-setuptools
$ sudo easy_install -U jsonpath

After that you can use inside python or with simple cli wrapper:
#!/usr/bin/python
import sys, json, jsonpath

path = sys.argv[1]

result = jsonpath.jsonpath(json.load(sys.stdin), path)
print json.dumps(result, indent=2)

… you can use it in your shell e.g. for json:
{
"store": {
"book": [
      {
"category": "reference",
"author": "Nigel Rees",
"title": "Sayings of the Century",
"price": 8.95
      },
      {
"category": "fiction",
"author": "Evelyn Waugh",
"title": "Sword of Honour",
"price": 12.99
      },
      {
"category": "fiction",
"author": "Herman Melville",
"title": "Moby Dick",
"isbn": "0-553-21311-3",
"price": 8.99
      },
      {
"category": "fiction",
"author": "J. R. R. Tolkien",
"title": "The Lord of the Rings",
"isbn": "0-395-19395-8",
"price": 22.99
      }
    ],
"bicycle": {
"color": "red",
"price": 19.95
    }
  }
}

You can print only book nodes with price lower than 10 by:
$ jsonpath '$..book[?(@.price

Result:
[
  {
"category": "reference",
"price": 8.95,
"title": "Sayings of the Century",
"author": "Nigel Rees"
  },
  {
"category": "fiction",
"price": 8.99,
"title": "Moby Dick",
"isbn": "0-553-21311-3",
"author": "Herman Melville"
  }
]

Have a nice JSON hacking!From time to time I have a need to do some fixes in my json data. In a world of flat files I do this with grep/sed/awk tool chain. How to handle it for JSON? Searching for a solution I came across the JSONPath. It quite mature tool (from 2007) but I haven't hear about it so I decided to share my experience with others.