A Guided Tour of the HMI

The QNX CAR application platform delivers mobile apps to the automobile with a powerful yet simple user experience.

Overview

The QNX CAR platform 2.0 RR contains many apps that give you a set of reference programs to help you write your own apps for your infotainment system. Some of these apps contain functional controls that capture and store vehicle settings, which automotive system integrators can use in their own software.

This release of the platform includes two categories of applications:
Core applications
Accessible from the taskbar shown on the initial screen of the HMI, these apps provide controls to configure general subsystems such as the media player or climate controller.
Utility applications
Accessible through the App Launcher screen, these apps perform more specific tasks that often involve accessing topical information, such as weather reports, social media feeds, or media repository sites.

Although the HMI shipped with the platform serves primarily as a reference UI, it does contain some active controls for configuring climate control, video playback, and other settings. The HMI is written in HTML5 and uses the Sencha Touch and JQuery frameworks. The active UI theme, set under Settings > Personalization, is rendered by using SCSS styling; the QNX CAR applications, such as Media Player and Communications, render their UIs by using CSS3. Developers of third-party applications may use any combination of SCSS and CSS3 styling.

For more information on the UI frameworks used by the HMI, see "HTML5 HMI Layer" in the QNX CAR Architecture Guide.

The following table lists the HMI apps that you can access from the initial screen when the system boots. The rest of this chapter contains brief descriptions of each of these apps.
Application Description
Home This is the dashboard that appears when the HMI starts up.
Navigation This tab is for the particular navigation engine you install, but by default it runs the HTMLGears demo.
Media Player Contains the Play Radio, Play Music, Play Video, and Search apps.
Settings This is the Car Control application, which contains the Audio Control, Climate Control, Virtual Mechanic, and Personalization apps.
Communications Contains controls that are accessible when a Bluetooth device such as a smartphone is paired with the head unit, allowing you to use the car's HMI to access the smartphone's email messages, text messages, address book, and dial pad.
App Launcher Contains several utility apps, including BestParking, The Weather Network, Pandora Radio, and more. Here you'll also find a Settings control for Bluetooth Connectivity, Software Updates, and Wired Network settings.
Push-to-Talk Located in the lower-left corner of the screen, this tab is for launching an automatic speech recognition (ASR) session for processing voice commands.
Note:

The following video gives an overview of the UI mechanisms and key reference apps:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pdx79iybMI