The Qt Company introduced the Qt for Automation offering, a new set of libraries and development tools for the building, services and industrial automation sectors. Built on Qt for Device Creation and Qt for Application Development, Qt for Automation is designed to enhance the performance and capabilities of edge devices for the Internet of Things (IoT). With Qt for Automation’s modular, scalable and secure libraries and interoperability capabilities, organizations in the automation industry can reduce operating costs and improve the efficiency of business processes. Qt’s technology is currently in use by millions of developers across the world and eight of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies.
With Gartner, Inc. forecasting earlier this year that 8.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2017 and 5.5 million new devices being connected every day, the IoT is one of the most opportunity-rich areas across today’s global technology landscape. Furthermore, McKinsey & Company found that the potential value that could be unlocked with IoT applications in factory settings – which represent a significant portion of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) – could be as much as $3.7 trillion in 2025, which is approximately one-third of all potential economic value of the IoT estimated by McKinsey. Consequently, organizations in the automation industry are increasingly looking for ways to pursue the market opportunities created by both the IoT and the IIoT.
The modern architecture and extensibility of the modular, scalable and secure tools and QtKNX libraries within Qt for Automation guarantees rapid innovation and future warranties, independent of any changes to the hardware or operating systems. By leveraging these features and the device interoperability capabilities of Qt for Automation, organizations in the industrial and home automation sectors are able to significantly reduce operating costs and streamline mission-critical business processes.
“With the rise of IoT, we realized that the amount of sensors and I/O we collected in our control systems was increasing exponentially, and we needed to aggregate the data and present it in a better way to become more efficient,” said Rune Volden, R&D Manager, Ulstein Power & Control. “Qt provides a very good tool for programming control systems as well as graphical user interfaces, which saved us a significant amount of development time.”
Qt for Automation extends Qt’s comprehensive portfolio of application development and device creation tools. The primary features of Qt for Automation include:
* QtKNX: QtKNX is the smart home library that translates user requests into KNX protocol. As such, QtKNX is the first major step to bringing home automation to the fingertips of Qt developers. Cross-platform, elegant, flexible and easy-to-use, QtKNX now makes it possible to write software for the smart home, which sets the stage to add new technology offerings such as voice control and innovative cloud services.
* Qt MQTT: Qt MQTT is a client implementation that can be used for creating devices to send data, but also monitoring solutions designed to manage telemetry information. Qt MQTT is fully compliant with the standard, including features for encryption and authentication, QoS, Wildcard support, Last Will. In addition, protocol level 3.1 and 3.1.1 are available to developers.
“Qt has been focused on the automation sector since our inception two decades ago, and our presence in the industry has expanded alongside the exponential growth of the global IoT market,” said Lars Knoll, CTO, The Qt Company. “With the new Qt for Automation offering, we are bringing our automation capabilities together in an integrated and comprehensive set of software development tools and libraries that have been designed for edge devices in industrial and home automation. This enables our automation customers to quickly and easily gain tangible business benefits, including reduced costs and improved efficiencies across their entire organization, and further extends our leadership position in the automation industry.”
Qt will share additional details about Qt for Automation during a webinar taking place at 4:00 p.m. CEST on Thursday, September 7th.
Furthermore, you can learn more about The Qt Company and Qt for Automation at this year’s Qt World Summit, the largest annual event dedicated to Qt developers, business leaders and product managers. The event will take place in Berlin, Germany from October 10-12 and will feature thought-provoking keynotes and demos, insightful breakouts, and industry highlights.
