The QNX MM team has been hard at work on the blackberry playbook, things are starting to pay off as we get closer to the finish line. Check out a few of these videos from monday and tuesday this week.
Jim Balsillie demoing QNX driving multiple use cases including video and camera:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/16/blackberry-playbook-first-hands-on-video/
Here is a shell script that should run on any system with Python but I only tried it on Mac. It will lookup the QNX documentation for any library call you pass in on the command line.
This is how you use it:
qnxhelp printf
And it will then open up a web browser with the docs for 6.4.1′s library page for printf.
Here is the script code for qnxhelp:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import os, string, sys, webbrowser
if (len(sys.argv) != 2):
print "Usage: %s <command to lookup>" %(sys.argv[0])
else:
word = sys.argv[1]
char = word[:1]
location = "http://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.4.1/neutrino/lib_ref/%s/%s.html" % (string.lower(char), string.lower(word)) webbrowser.open(location)
Pretty excited about the acquisition of QNX by RIM. I think that together there will be a lot of synergy going forward.
OSNews had a great article that is worth a read: http://www.osnews.com/story/23134/Research_In_Motion_Buys_QNX_Software
Our team has finished Aviage MM 1.2. Its got some excellent features and new platforms that it supports. Notably:
There are lots of other improvements also. We’ve been busy this past 6 months!
You can find more information about it here:
http://www.qnx.com/products/middleware/multimedia.html
This project is developed openly on the foundry27 site where you can get source code and daily builds. If you’re looking to try it out you can do that for free with one of those daily builds on top of QNX Momentics 6.4.0 or 6.4.1(soon to be released).
The multimedia project I work on at QNX is now available on foundry27. Foundry27 is QNX’s development portal where you can find software projects actively being developed.
On the foundry27 site for multimedia you can get source code, documentation, forums and other great resources. The source code is the latest and greatest, updated every night at 2am and right after that a binary nightly build is available. If you want to build the source, make sure to check our the source guide wiki page that describes the straight forward process.
We put together a QNX video a while ago where I walk through at a high level what each of the components are. Here it is:
QNX RTOS and multimedia are helping to drive this new infotainment system provided in the latest Audi’s.
Audi turns to Nvidia for 3D navigation: “
Audis new navigation system includes 3D textured buildings.
(Credit: Audi)
Audi’s new Q5 sports navigation graphics empowered by chip maker Nvidia, along with a radically updated dashboard interface, which Audi calls the Multimedia Interface, or MMI. Integrated into the new navigation system is an automotive grade Nvidia …
“
QNX is at convergence this year with a great demo. Some great things from a multimedia perspective that we’re showing at this demo:
* Zune playback
* iPod 1-wire playback
* USB Mass storage playback
* Youtube
* Video games
* Multinode: you can plug in an iPod in the front, and listen to it in the back seat using headphones
* From you LCD panel dash cluster you can see what song you’re playing, and its artwork
I think this demonstrates a well “connected” car. You’ve got the devices, you’ve got the internet, and you’ve got several happy networked users!
Here is a photo of the booth:
There are more photos of this on [Paul Leroux's blog](http://onqpl.blogspot.com/2008/10/report-from-convergence.html “On Q: Report from Convergence”).
There are lots of other advanced features that it shows as well such as voice integration, hands free support for bluetooth phones. I hope a few of you have a chance to see it.
Cars are getting to be pretty advanced and feature rich. [CNET has an article that talks about how iPods are integrated into more than half of 2009 models](http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-10064887-48.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=TheCarTechblog “Raising the bar: iPod integration in more than half of 2009 models | Car Tech: An automotive blog from CNET – CNET Reviews”). QNX likely has contributed a large portion to many of these models. Its satisfying to see your work end up in real-world product.
[The article](http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-10064887-48.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=TheCarTechblog “Raising the bar: iPod integration in more than half of 2009 models | Car Tech: An automotive blog from CNET – CNET Reviews”) also has some interesting stats on hard drives and bluetooth integration in cars. The head units in cars these days are as powerful as many desktop computers and have even more peripherals.
Now unfortunately, the one thing the article has completely wrong is that “Microsoft Automotive Platform … offers the most universal integration”. If I were to compare MS Auto to QNX Car, I’d like to point out:
* CD’s are not dead. MS Auto currently doesn’t do CDs, or CD Changers. QNX is shipping in many cars today with that feature. We also support MP3-CD’s
* Ripping CDs, or USB Sticks. QNX’s MME manages all this for you so that when you ask to rip a CD or list of USB tracks to your hard drive it will do that as fast as possible without interrupting your playback. And if you power off your car, it’ll continue where it left off.
* Embedded hard drive support: without ripping, do you support a hard drive?
* Internet Radio integration.. how connected are you without the internet?
* QNX Car also has the same “most universal integration” features that MS has: USB Mass Storage, iPod, PlaysForSure, Zune, Bluetooth.
* QNX Car is shipping in many other makes than Ford. In fact the last stat I heard is that it is in over 40% of the 2009 models! I should talk to marketing to get a completely accurate number.
As usual, Microsoft has lots of dollars to spend on advertising, but the real question is how good is their product? QNX has always been quality driven, and therefore is chosen to run space equipment, nuclear power plants, and the fancy features in your car.
I spent some time getting QNX working on [Parallels](http://www.parallels.com/ “Virtual pc, virtual machine and multiple operating system solutions by Parallels, Inc.”) 3.0. Its working well with the exception of video which I know can work, I just haven’t spent the time to get it going yet. If you get it working please comment on this post with how to do it.
First off, why use Parallels now that [VMWare](http://www.vmware.com/ “VMware: Virtualization, Virtual Machine & Virtual Server Consolidation – VMware”) is working? I use Parallels instead of VMWare because it is much faster for what I use it for. I have all my work on my mac and export that folder using nfs to my virtual machines. On my virtual machines I do builds as well as run and test my code. I did a quick test comparing QNX 6.3.2 building the multimedia engine and it took 9.5 minutes on VMWare Fusion 1.1, it took Parallels slightly less than 3 minutes to do the same thing. I also find a significamarknt difference in performance while running my application also.
# Issues:
There are 3 issues with QNX 6.3.2 running on Parallels out of the box:
1. Kernel doesn’t work
2. Network driver (ne2000) doesn’t work
3. Graphics detect vga mode only
There is only one issue with running QNX 6.3.2 on VMWare Fusion out of the box:
1. USB doesn’t work
I’ve got problems one and two fixed for Parallels, here are the steps to get yourself a QNX 6.3.2 virtual machine running on Parallels 3.0 build 5582. There are two floppy images you’ll need to get for this off my server:
1. *Boot floppy*: [http://www.mediatype.ca/wp-content/uploads/parallels/QNX632ParallelsBoot.fdd](http://www.mediatype.ca/wp-content/uploads/parallels/QNX632ParallelsBoot.fdd “”)
2. *Installation floppy*: [http://www.mediatype.ca/wp-content/uploads/parallels/QNX632ParallelsInstall.fdd](http://www.mediatype.ca/wp-content/uploads/parallels/QNX632ParallelsInstall.fdd “”)
# Create the virtual machine:
1. get the [QNX 6.3.2 ISO](http://www.qnx.com/download/feature.html?programid=16783 “QNX Downloads: Documents and Software”)
2. open Parallels
3. click file | new
4. choose custom. OS type: Other OS Version: Other
5. Choose the amount of RAM to give QNX. I choose 300.
6. Create a new hard disk image. I make mine 3000GB expanding.
7. Shared networking
8. Give it a name
9. Optimize for VM
10. Click more options, then select ISO image, then choose the image you got from step 1.
11. uncheck “start guest operating system”
12. Click menu item “Edit” then “Virtual Machine…”
13. Click “Add…” I add a usb adapter
14. Click “Options” Then click the “Booting” tab on the right. Choose “Floppy, Hard Disk, CDROM”
15. Click “Floppy” on the left. Check the “Connect at startup” checkbox. Click the “…” for the image file and choose the QNX632ParallelsInstall.fdd file.
16. Click OK. Then start the VM.
# Install QNX:
Follow the steps on the screen. You’ll need your license key to perform the installation. Make sure to install to the complete hard drive. Myself I install all the tools and GPL utilities. When it asks you to reboot, just turn off the virtual machine by hitting the red stop button on the top right.
# Prepare the VM for regular booting:
1. Click “Edit” | “Virtual Machine…”
2. Click Floppy
3. Check the “…” for the image file and choose QNX632ParallelsBoot.fdd
4. Click OK. Start the virtual machine.
5. This part you need to do quickly. While the virtual machine is booting, click on the black part where the VM text will come up to put your cursor into it. Then when it asks if you want to enter boot options by hitting the space key, hit the space key on your keyboard.
6. Press F5 to have it drop to a shell during boot
7. Type these commands in the shell to replace the stock 6.3.2 network driver with one that works included in the boot image:
cd /lib/dll
/bin/cp devn-ne2000.so devn-ne2000.so.bak
/bin/cp /proc/boot/devn-ne2000.so devn-ne2000.so
8. Hit CTRL-D twice
9. It should continue booting. Only the vga option will present itself at first, continue using these settings.
I’ve always found it a lot of work to install open source software on QNX.. until today. pkgsrc is fantastic!
From the QNX community website:
‘pkgsrc’ is a framework for building third-party software and managing the resulting packages. Originally developed on NetBSD, pkgsrc has evolved according to NetBSD’s principle of portability and currently supports 13 different platforms (hopefully QNX will be number 14). Over 6400 packages are in the base distribution.
This handles dependencies and can build packages on your desktop, very important for a good UNIX system. So far I’ve got bash, openssh, and perl installed… more to follow 
If you haven’t given it a shot it is quite simple to get started with, you can find the instructions on the wiki.