CCS/LAUNCHXL-F28379D: Issues with GUI

David Petryk said:

1. How does one set the resolution of the "grid" that snaps the objects into place? Its is fixed at a value of 10. Any way o change it?

No there is no option to change it. I assume that you are using the Application template, this template uses absolution position and doesn't scale well for different screen resolution, you should try to convert your application to use flow layout. You can change the viewport element to use flow layout in the STYLES panel.

David Petryk said:

2. When moving a number of objects (more than 1) when actually trying to place them into the new position the GUI builder "freezes up" for a while then resumes. I presume that is because it is a cloud based application and  must be doing a bunch of stuff over the internet. The response time makes it almost unusable to the point that it is faster to move things individually. When groups of objects that are aligned to the grid and then moved as a group it is impossible to get them to line up on the grid. You ave to drop the group then re-align each one individually to get back on grid. Whats up with that?

There shouldn't be any network performance issue for moving elements around in the designer. There is minimum backend processing when using GUI Composer designer, the designer is primary using the client's browser to perform computation. You can multi-select the elements and set the position in the STYLES panel, this should be easier to position the widget in absolute position layout.

David Petryk said:

3. Running the GUI project from the browser while connected to the cloud works fine. I am able to scale the GUI to fit it into any size. So I built my application thinking that I could do this with a standalone GUI application. However the standalone version does not run in a browser and seems to be running as a Java application. When that happens there is no way that I have found to scale the GUI screen. So thinking all this time that size was scalable and I could deploy mu GUI application to any device that the size would be scalable so no problem. Well I must be doing something wrong because I cant vary the size when running standalone.

The standalone application is using NodeWebKit (Chromium) as the browser, it behaves the same as the online chrome browser. When you say resize, are you referring to zooming your application? We have a new widget the enable you to zoom the application in the up coming release of the GUI Composer designer. Additionally, having the application uses flow layout will be much more scalable than absolute layout.

David Petryk said:

4. Exporting the GUI application to my 64bit WIN 10 desktop machine runs fine just as advertised however I cannot get the same application to run on two different WIN 10 32 bit laptops. Everything starts off the same and the application connects to the TI Cloud Agent just fine but it will not connect to the hardware. No error message - no timeout - it just sits the saying it has connected to the agent and goes no further. Is this some 32 bit issue? My requirements usage to the application requires that the application run on a laptop that is not connected to the internet. I dont understand why it is even going to the TI Cloud Agent at all. That implies to me that the Cloud Agent must be connected to the internet. I asked E2E and the response cam back that it does not need the internet to run. Somebody please help me to make that a reality.

You shouldn't need to connect to the internet to use standalone GUI Composer. I believe there is missing device information that needs to be included into your app. The upcoming release of GUI Composer designer should have the fix. See reply from Aarti's reply for for the workaround if you need it right away.

David Petryk said:

5. When changing the code to the MCU chip since it is compiled using CCS can you download to the chip from there or must you go through the dance of opening the project properties, downloading, flashing, exiting, running bla bla bla...? Sometimes when doing this many times over and over it does not really download the code to the chip. It does not indicate that that has happened and then your on a wild goose chase truing to fix your code or something that is not really broken. I have to quit the GUI builder and re-start it to fix the problem.

Like Aarti said, you don't need to use GUI Composer to flash the code. However, you do need to provide the .out file inorder for GUI Composer to use it to flash the device when it run. There is an option in the Project Properties to not auto program the device, but if you are using XDS Program model, GUI Composer required the .out file to load symbol inorder to communicate with the device.

David Petryk said:

6. While editing the project, I save at strategic points during the development. One time I wanted to revert to my last save but surprise! it seemed to be saving every edit. SO does the GUI builder constantly save every edit you make?

It saves whenever you run your application. You can explicitly press the save button/menu, it saves your file. Additionally, it also backup a copy of your project so that you can revert back to the last time you perform this operation. To revert to previous saved operation, use the Project | Recover menu option. Note that the number of backup is limited.

Regards,
Patrick

David,

I apologize for the delayed reply.

I'm afraid I may not have been explicitly clear on the steps that need to be done to get this working. Earlier in the thread I referenced, there is mention of uploading the target configuration file to the GUI Composer project before exporting it to standalone app. I believe that is the step you are missing. It is described in this post: https://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/c2000/f/171/p/803904/2983632#2983632

Could you make sure that step is done and let us know how it goes?