We are excited to announce the latest software release from the QNX Everywhere program! This release brings new hardware and audio support for the QNX Everywhere target images, some great new content about developing drivers on QNX, and QoL improvements to the QNX Developer Desktop.

Quick Start Target Image and Custom Target Image updates

We’ve enhanced both the Quick Start Target Image (QSTI) package and the Custom Target Image (CTI) repository to work with Raspberry Pi 5. (This follows our recent release of the Pi 5 BSP in QNX Software Center, and the source code release of the Pi 5 BSP in GitHub.)

Here's what's new in the pre-built QSTI and CTI repo:

• Added a pre-built QSTI for Pi 5, and added Pi 5 support in the CTI repo (for building your own custom Pi 5 QNX images).
• Added audio support, which includes playback (WAV/AAC), recording, and encoding/decoding (AAC), on RPi4 and RPi5.

QNX Driver Development Kits (DDK)

Folks have been asking for this! We have made the driver APIs available and launched a developer's guide for the below drivers to help you build device drivers for the QNX OS. More sections are coming soon, in the works now!

Available DDKs:

1. Serial devices (UART, I2C, SPI)
2. HID (human interface devices)
3. Touch devices
4. Network devices

DDK Documentation

Here's everything you need to know:

Driver Development Kit (DDK) Developer’s Guide

The Driver Development Kit (DDK) Developer’s Guide is for developers who build device drivers for the QNX OS.

QNX Everywhere

There's also a new course available about developing drivers for QNX! (You must be signed in to learning.qnx.com for the link to work):

Developer Desktop updates

In case you missed it: in December, we released a self-hosted QNX environment with a full desktop environment: the QNX Developer Desktop. With this environment, you can: write, build, run, test, and debug your QNX applications all on a QNX target.

In this release, we made some backend changes and polished some rough edges to ensure a smoother ride with the desktop. But the best part: we now have a full documentation section dedicated to the Developer Desktop:

About this guide

This guide provides instructions for building applications on QNX OS 8 using the self-hosted desktop, without the need for cross-compilation. It’s built on the XFCE (XForms Common Environment) desktop environment, allowing QNX Everywhere users to start building QNX apps with minimal setup and friction.

QNX Everywhere

Lastly, our Open-source Dashboard now flaunts 554 ported packages. Some of the packages are already pre-installed in the developer desktop, some are waiting for you to use when you need them!

What's Next? 

That's it for January. We'll have more for you in March, where we're aiming to have the full self-hosted Developer Desktop experience on Pi 4 and Pi 5, plus some other goodies.

We very much want to hear your feedback! Please come discuss this release on Reddit @ r/qnx, in the QNX Discord, or leave a comment here with your thoughts.

Enjoy!