Building Open Source Embedded UIs with Qt & Slint
summary
Built a working smartwatch UI demo implemented in Rust+Slint then reproduced in C++/Slint and in Qt QML; visually the UIs match. Measured build and runtime: full compile Qt 8.7 s vs Slint 3 min 16 s, cold-start ~11.46 ms vs ~11.57 ms, single-rectangle change rebuild Qt 1.7 s vs Slint 0.19 s. Notes tooling and licensing differences: Qt QML uses dynamic JavaScript runtime and per-device/commercial MCU products with LGPL/GPL options, while Slint compiled ahead-of-time favors smaller runtime and GPLv3 or commercial terms for embedded.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Introduction
- 3:06Choosing embedded UI framework
- 7:25Qt Quick vs Slint
- 9:57Hello world comparison
- 14:09Smartwatch demo time display
- 16:42Qt flexibility risks
- 18:30Bindings in Qt vs Slint
- 19:53Live demo performance
- 23:01Tooling comparison
- 24:29Licensing Qt vs Slint
- 26:16Migration best practices
- 27:41Framework selection patterns
- 30:53Final takeaways and Q&A session
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