Tecdet develops systems for traffic control and inspection for the Brazilian government. Their engineers wanted to upgrade technology based on Windows x86, which was no longer satisfactory in terms of performance and energy consumption. They rebuilt the system for the Linux Arm architecture on Toradex modules and chose TotalCross to develop their GUI.
Why did Tecdet choose TotalCross?
1. Time to market
The project lead engineer had firmware experience but no previous GUI creation experience. TotalCross was the fastest framework for him to learn and use. With basic Java knowledge, he learned TotalCross in one week and built a five-screen first version in two more weeks. That represented more than a 60% reduction from the estimate for the alternative C/C++ framework.
2. Cost
The project used low-end devices and needed to avoid runtime fees. TotalCross met these requirements with a free and open-source license and high performance on constrained hardware.
3. Low footprint
The TotalCross runtime was 5MB at the time. The complete application, including the custom Yocto distribution developed by O.S. Systems, was only 23MB.
Embedded systems for society’s demands
Projects like Tecdet’s must balance available budget, time-to-market expectations, and long-term maintenance. A framework that is easier and faster to learn can make this work more sustainable.