What is the Serious Human Interface™ Platform (SHIP)?

SHIP includes five main ingredients:

• SHIP Total IDE (SHIPTide), the PC-based IDE for developing your GUI
• the cargo binary data file that SHIPTide exports, containing your whole GUI including fonts, images, layout, audio, compiled scripts, communications, and more
• the Serious Integrated Module (SIM) hardware that hosts your GUI and becomes your new front panel, communicating typically by UART to the rest of your system
• SHIPEngine, the embedded runtime firmware on your SIM that runs GUIs that SHIPTide exports
• Communications, including the upcoming SHIPBridge Protocol, enabling communications between the SIM and your system

Developing with SHIP takes embedded GUI development to a completely different level. You can have a prototype GUI up in running in a few days, even if you’ve never used SHIP before. Once you’re up to speed with SHIP, you can knock out new GUI pages in as little as a few minutes. And you’ll be stunned at how little code is involved in creating a modern looking GUI that is completely functional. That’s what SHIP does: great looking GUIs, lots of flexibility on what you end up with, and as little coding for you as we can enable.

The SHIP GUI Development Process: Design, Export, Try

Design

SHIPTide is the SHIP Total IDE… the rapid GUI development tool that runs on Windows. You develop your GUI on the PC with very little coding — SHIPTide helps you with screen layout, importing fonts and images (there are no font/image converters needed outside SHIPTide — it does all that), and arranging your snippets of code that wires the GUI together.

Export

When you want to try your GUI on a SIM, export the cargo file from SHIPTide. This processes all your fonts, images, text, multi-language, layout, script (you get the picture) and builds a single data file we call the “cargo”.

Try

Connect the SIM to your PC and SHIPTide downloads the GUI cargo file over the USB port into the FLASH of the SIM. The SIM reboots, and instantly your GUI appears. The SHIPEngine firmware on the SIM “runs” your GUI and makes it come alive.

First Steps

Want to learn a bit more about SHIP? Here are a few resources that can get you familiar with SHIP concepts and capabilities before you dive deeper:

• Intro to SHIPTide
• Overview of the Box Model… all about SHIP containers

SHIP Version 5

SHIP Version 5 (SHIPv5), supports the platforms below:

For more information on SHIPv5:

• SHIPv5 Overview
• SHIPv5 Boot System
• SHIPBridge Protocol

Technical Reference

• Project Properties
• Data Types
• Communications
• GUI Reference Manuals for SIMs