EM Microelectronic

Built with Qt

From concept to product: on-demand fusion of technologies for tailor-made solutions.

1975

Empowering wearables for over 45 years

1

First tactile watch worldwide

1

First in-cell touch worldwide

EM Microelectronic is leading supplier of ultra-low power integrated circuits, modules and displays to most distinguished watch brands and various applications. They deliver the technologies driving the capacitive tactile interface of the Tissot T-Touch and Swatch Touch, and are one of the three integral companies in the Swatch Group Electronic Systems segment, with primary mission and expertise closely linked to ultra-low power technology and know-how.

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Qt to wear

Recently, EM Microelectronic started a close cooperation with Qt Group to leverage the advanced UI capabilities offered by the Qt framework for the creation of their wearables, consumer electronics and mobility solutions. In this product area, Qt for MCUs offers all the key functionalities of the Qt framework tuned to the microcontroller domain. Its lightweight graphics engine, Qt Quick Ultralite, powers fluid UIs, rich in 2D and 2.5D graphics, on MCU platforms with limited memory and CPU cycles.

Being designed for resource-constrained embedded systems powered by microcontrollers, Qt for MCUs presented itself as the natural candidate for creating user interfaces for the types of devices we produce” says Marcin Marzencki, Development Manager of Connected Modules & Displays at EM Microelectronic. 

After only a few weeks of work, EM Microelectronic presented at electronicaFair in Munich several demos built with Qt. Most notably they showcased a smartwatch demo built with Qt for MCUs on EM Microelectronic’s latest OLED display.

Watch our video to learn more about our joint presence at the electronicaFair in Munich

In our field, high accuracy, full reliability and finesse in design go hand in hand with top performance—low memory footprint and instant boot, foremost—all features that Qt for MCUs includes out of the box.

 

Marcin Marzencki, Development Manager of Connected Modules & Displays at EM Microelectronic

The SmartWatch demo

The Smart Watch demo’s primary screen shows, in addition to the time, the battery level, the current heartbeat and the steps done during the day.

The health widget can be accessed by swiping over the screen. This reveals a detailed cardiogram and heartbeat indicator.

Other functions available include a compass and a weather widget.

Demos on PC

Other demos built with Qt were displayed on a wide AMOLED display powered by a PC.

These include a smartwatch similar to the one running on MCU, a coffee machine interface and a micro mobility application intended for e-bikes.  The e-bike's main screen shows speed and journey statistics. One can access maps and navigation, zoom in and out, and interact with the map.

These demos showcase once more the flexibility of the Qt framework in terms of portability of the same UI applications to any type of hardware and software. Create once, deploy everywhere is our core principle and it has many advantages:

  • Saving time and cost, by reusing the same assets on different UIs
  • Ensuring consistent visuals, aligned to your brand, across displays
  • Scaling your apps across the full range of hardware, from MCUs, to MPUs, desktop, mobile, etc.

With these benefits in mind, we look forward to a fruitful collaboration for the creation of more Qt applications for the wide variety of highly customized devices produced by EM Microelectronic.

It was incredibly easy to develop these neat and intuitive UI applications using Qt for MCUs. This UI framework for microcontrollers includes all the necessary pre-built UI controls and animations that are needed to achieve fluid UI/UX. The cross-platform framework offers ready-made support for most 32-bit microcontrollers and the Qt toolchain integrates seamlessly and readily with our SDK and development environment. Qt interactive design/develop workflow through Qt Design Studio and Qt Creator allowed us to create this demo with extreme efficiency.” 

Marcin Marzencki, Development Manager of Connected Modules & Displays at EM Microelectronic

EM Microelectronic is a semiconductor manufacturer specializing in the design and production of ultra-low power, low voltage integrated circuits (IC) for battery-operated and field-powered applications across diverse consumer and automotive industries.

Originally founded to design, develop and produce integrated circuits specifically for electronic watches – the first mass-market wearable electronic devices – EM Microelectronic has invariably focused on creating outstanding UIs with the lowest possible resource consumption.

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