Newbie here.... Hardware Support?

[PITGUY]

Thanks for the info.

[kalle]

That's not so much a question of Qt, but rather of your underlying operating system. If that has decent drivers for the hardware, either there is Qt support already (possibly through third-party add-ons), or it isn't very hard to write.

[PITGUY]

So your saying.... if the hardware driver is present for the OS then there would be no issue in using that hardware in QT? and someone with QT experience could write a OS driver if needed, if one was not already made?

[kalle]

Well, you need two things. A hardware driver for the OS, and integration of that driver into Qt. Both require different skills (kernel/driver development the former, Qt API and systems programming the latter), but yes, if there is a OS-level driver already, that solves half of the problem.

[PITGUY]

BUT it all can be done with the correct programmer? I like what I see with QT, but do not what to have this program started and then find out in 2 months....Opps... it can't support these devices.

[andre]

As Kalle indicates: writing an OS-level driver requires different skills than integrating interaction with such a driver into Qt. You may be able to find programmers that can do both, but you can not expect a Qt expert to automatically know driver programming for any OS.

Qt offers support (either directly or through external classes like "QextSerialPort":http://qextserialport.sourceforge.net/ ) for most of the basic things you are after: networking, serial communication. Other things are probably already handled at OS level, like the printers, and Qt can interact with those. For others: YMMV.

[kalle]

Yes, it's mostly a question of finding the right programmer. For the OS-level device driver, there is one other caveat: If there are no specifications for the device (e.g. because the hardware manufacturer chooses not to publish them for whatever reason), then writing the device driver will be anything from very hard to impossible. But fortunately, that's not the case any more as often as it was a few years ago.

[PITGUY]

Thank You both.....That makes more sense now. I will check with my manufacture of my devices to see what they will provide if drivers do not exist for the OS and or QT.