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3 minute read
We are thrilled to announce that the latest version of Storyboard is out now!! With the new enhanced features, Storyboard 8.1 helps speed up the devel...
4 minute read
A Solution For Testing User Interfaces Developed Using Storyboard - Part 1 The user interface serves as the primary point of interaction between a dev...
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In today's world, touchscreens are everywhere, be it our mobile phones, car dashboards, smart home appliances, or industrial automation; we rely on to...
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People continue to use non-electric vehicles despite concerns over climate change. A recent report from JD Power shows that in March 2023, 21% of shop...
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Imagine having a state-of-the-art smart home automation system installed in your house, capable of seamlessly managing various aspects of your home li...
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We are excited to introduce our most advanced version of the GUI development framework yet - Storyboard 8.0. It comes packed with new features and enh...
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Even though Embedded World 2023 ended last week, the conversations surrounding it are still going strong. As Mason Cooley once said, "An event is not ...
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The screens are all polished and the embedded GUI apps are running, as we prepare to welcome you to the Embedded World Germany 2023. Our team of embed...
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Before we get into GUI Industrial trends, it is important to know what exactly GUI is and how relevant it is in our lives. PCs, smartphones, washing m...
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Customers often ask us about Storyboard's performance on specific hardware. What is the maximum number of frames per second that Storyboard can achiev...
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The features we envisioned and desired in our cars are now a reality. As you get closer to the car, the car lights up to greet you; once you enter the...
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With the smart home/smart appliances market continually growing year-over-year, there are aspects that need fine-tuning and speculation over which dev...
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The medical device industry is growing at a rapid pace. It is among the world's top 10 most prominent sectors, predicted to grow from $495.46 billion ...
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A good user interface can make or break a product. All companies that make great products understand how important it is to engage their customers to ...
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We are thrilled to announce that the latest version of Storyboard is out now!! With the new enhanced features, Storyboard 7.2 enables the development ...
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Figma is a cloud-based collaborative interface design tool that lets designers connect with their team members at every stage of the design process. I...
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With the abundance of innovation in display & development technologies in the embedded community, Embedded World 2022 concluded successfully on 23...
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Embedded World – the embedded community's global platform is just a few days away, featuring three days of vendor exhibitions & speaking sessions....
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When it comes to creating a smart home, chances are you already know about Zigbee and Z-wave, but do you know about "Thread"? 
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In this post, embedded systems expert Jacob Beningo offers tips to help developers get started with their first embedded GUI development project, from...
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From modernization to no-code tools and data visualization, here are our top trends for industrial UX development in 2022.
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A consumer electronics revolution is brewing. Incumbent manufacturers in the high-growth, high-potential wearables market are seeing sales slip away t...
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In this guest post, embedded systems expert Jacob Beningo offers techniques in graphics, fonts, and memory to get better performance out of resource-c...
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Up and down the tech stack, embedded systems manufacturers have one problem in common: there aren’t enough semiconductors to satisfy demand. Whether b...
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With a small footprint and low-power needs, microcontrollers (MCUs) are fast becoming the preferred platform of choice for organizations developing em...
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Build better wearable GUIs on MCU devices by learning the impacts of memory, graphics and battery life on UX design and software development decisions...
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The importance and benefits of an effective HMI for industrial automation applications.
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Our application developers discuss their favorite professional services projects and the technical challenges they've solved.
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In this guest post, embedded systems expert Jacob Beningo explains that to deliver successful embedded GUI products, developers must have an understan...
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Understand how user experience applies to industrial environments where safety and clarity are top priorities.
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The top reasons why effective medical device UX is critical for patient outcomes, safety, and market success.
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How to apply common GUI design guidelines to the industrial environment, from safety to user training.
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From building emotional connections and neumorphism to cross-platform scalability, here are the top industrial GUI trends for 2021.
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Consider animations, responsiveness, convenience, and stringent testing to boost the effectiveness of your smartwatch UX development.
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How Aptera partnered with Crank’s Professional Services to get their solar-powered vehicle to market in less than a year
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Bring UX, architecture, and resource optimization to the forefront when building and validating your applications
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To build the best user experience, adopt parallel workflows that eliminate traditional obstacles between design and development.
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To achieve the best user experience and platform performance, look for the designer-developer workflow system, supported hardware and OS targets, and ...
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There are a multitude of factors that make 60 FPS an incomplete goal. It’s not just about an arbitrary number, it’s about managing CPU workloads to ac...
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How do graphics, memory usage, and power consumption affect the creation of vivid and feature-rich user experiences (UX) for IoT devices? Creating the...
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In today’s digital world where information is aplenty and attention spans are limited, companies are constantly looking for new ways to engage with co...
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Hint: It’s not watchOS or Wear OS There’s a wearable war in our future and it won’t be the most powerful that wins. Alongside explosive growth in the ...
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In 1990, the FDA published a report, Device Recalls: A Study of Quality Problems, that revealed 44 percent of medical device recalls were due to desig...
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When building an embedded system there are many choices you will face when deciding the correct GUI hardware and software combinations to best get you...
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Smartphones changed the way we interact with technology, making smart technology commonplace in everything from Fitbits to freezers. More recently, a ...
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Growth is great! We're thrilled to let you know about our recent acquisition by AMETEK (NYSE: AME) .
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Gesture-based UI refers to using specific physical gestures in order to operate an interface. Take your smartphone for instance. You can already inter...
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Can teams working with microcontrollers (MCU) and microprocessors (MPU) from STMicroelectronics find ways to save resources and optimize workflows? Wh...
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If you’re developing, testing, or optimizing embedded products today then you know that customer success starts with an amazing user experience. UX th...
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Today’s IoT and industrial device markets are changing the way we build graphical user interfaces (GUI). As users demand richer and more featured-pack...
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Most embedded systems companies invest heavily in software development, and spend a lot of time on optimizing their productivity. While software leade...
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Crank Storyboard is purpose-built to remove barriers between developers and designers working together on embedded GUI products. While Adobe Photoshop...
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The technology of the future is getting closer. Not only are we getting a peek at what’s possible during this week’s virtual CES 2021, we’re also seei...
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We all know the old adage that user experience (UX) is often best when it goes unnoticed. Embedded systems UX, however, has traditionally had a somewh...
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We're pleased to present this guest blog by Charlie Alexander, Director of Product Strategy at Ultraleap.
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Last week marked the official launch of the Aptera Motors solar electric vehicle (sEV). Not only is the Aptera the first electric vehicle with up to a...
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When choosing an embedded GUI builder for your device, there are several factors that should be considered to ensure a seamless design and development...
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It’s no surprise that the view inside the medical industry is at a time of unprecedented change, with new device and data requirements reshaping funct...
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When building an embedded Linux GUI application using Crank Storyboard, here are the configuration and environmental considerations to take into accou...
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It may seem obvious that usability should be a top priority for medical devices. But, unfortunately, devices with poor graphical user interfaces (GUI)...
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Are your development and design teams ready to meet the shift in consumer demand towards touchless GUIs? While there will always be a market for touch...
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Thomas Fletcher, Co-Founder and lead Storyboard product guy, walks through the ins and outs of embedded GUI testing in our Embedded GUI Expert Talks w...
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Working in the embedded development space as a GUI designer is definitely different than your typical GUI and UX development role. Understanding that ...
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Many people are building embedded devices that increasingly incorporate some measure of artificial intelligence (AI) into their products. An area of p...
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It's common for one to be confused about the difference between UI and UX design. User experience design is really about the holistic process used to ...
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What the future of connected, IoT smart devices looks like for embedded systems built with NXP processors and Storyboard GUI development tools. Rapidl...
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Let’s say you’re building a smart home appliance. Or a connected health vital-sign monitor. Or an IoT factory-control panel. Or a next generation car....
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It’s clear that COVID-19 has people rethinking long established cultural habits, such as shaking hands and standing close to others. It is also reshap...
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Ask any embedded GUI developer or designer about re-building your product’s user interface, and you’ll probably be met with groans. Creating user inte...
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Thomas Fletcher, Co-Founder and lead Storyboard product guy, talks UI task prioritization in our Embedded GUI Expert Talks with Crank Software. By wat...
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Thomas Fletcher, Co-Founder and VP of R&D and lead Storyboard product guy, talks glue logic, and how glue logic is a connective piece that allows ...
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When it comes to attracting Crankonauts, we know that having a positive company culture has been invaluable in establishing our reputation, and our ab...
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When designing an embedded system with an MCU, one of the hardest tasks for an engineering team is deciding on the type of “brains” their new electron...
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Thomas Fletcher, Co-Founder and VP of R&D, talks on the specific use case of building rich UIs populated with images and graphics and how you can ...
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Fonts are a key component of embedded GUI development and we see a lot of confusion when it comes to understanding them. What's the difference between...
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If you had have asked me (pre-Covid), what a typical day of an embedded user interface (UI) developer looked like, I would have answered with somethin...
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Who says that developing a compelling, user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) for your next touchscreen device has to be complicated? At Crank S...
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At Embedded World 2020, we were fortunate to cross paths with Bob O'Brien, co-Founder and President of Display Supply Chain Consultants, a small consu...
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We're fans over here at Crank of the Electronic Engineering Journal (EE Journal) so we jumped at the chance to be interviewed by Amelia Dalton on her ...
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Voice recognition technology continues to grow in both capacity and popularity. The original technology was rather primitive – you may remember strugg...
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Understanding and accounting for the different memory requirements of your embedded graphics application is critical. Your choice of system-level memo...
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Embedded systems and UI development can be complicated. Factor in social distancing and product teams being forced to continue development remotely, a...
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There are fundamental differences in developing embedded UI applications for MCUs and MPUs. But as MCU performance and functionality continue to impro...
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Interview #2 The Crank Software team met up with Sebastian Ullherr, Managing Partner of interfacewerk, at Embedded World 2020 to chat about the trends...
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Interview #1 The Crank Software team met up with Karlheinz Blankenbach, Electronics Displays Conference chair and professor, at Embedded World 2020 to...
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My thoughts are with you and your loved ones during these uncertain times, and like so many, it’s tough to hear updates about the impacts COVID-19 is ...
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A rich UI prototype can be an amazing thing. It can bring an existing product back to life and give it a competitive advantage, or it can be so transf...
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We're so excited to announce our latest release of Storyboard. With a focus on making UI design and development easier for our customers worldwide, we...
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Thanks to Lavanya Markandachari at Crank Partner, iWave Systems, for this guest post. Crank Software and iWave Systems partnered up to support rich gr...
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Thanks to our partner Satoshi Sasaki , General Manager at Crank Partner, uQuest, for this guest post. Crank Software’s UI development software now sup...
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Updated on March 5, 2020. The Crank team hopped on a plane and left the cold Canadian winter behind heading to our biggest industry event of the year ...
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The biggest embedded event of the year. The team at Crank is busy preparing for our biggest event of the year, Embedded World. From the latest trends ...
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Battery life is one of the most important features of a mobile device. When your mobile device’s time between charges is four days versus four hours, ...
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Innovation and technology have radically changed the way we work and live. And we love being at the center of it. Literally. Crank Software’s HQ is lo...
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If you’ve been following our blog or have downloaded our eBook around best practices for embedded UI development on microcontrollers (MCUs) to micropr...
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GUI services help your product win market share, by supporting your team throughout the development lifecycle, from UX design and prototyping to devel...
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If you’re using an STM32 microcontroller, you may have noticed that STMicroelectronics now bundles in free graphics software from TouchGFX as part of ...
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We're excited to announce our latest release of Storyboard. As a UX and customer-focused software company, we make a point to focus on regular, smalle...
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Systematically developing high-quality reusable software components and frameworks has traditionally been a tall order. Many developers successfully r...
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When it comes to the buying patterns of North American consumers, the market is changing. It used to be that you could make one dishwasher, one toaste...
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The kitchen is becoming one of the tech scene’s fastest growing spaces. It makes sense: the kitchen is the center of the home – where we nourish ourse...
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For many years, product success was based on mass marketing, mass production, and massive retailers. But the world has changed. More and more people a...
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If you haven’t heard the term hybrid rendering before, that’s because it’s pretty new. Broadly speaking, hybrid rendering generates graphics by using ...
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You’ve heard us talking about design in the embedded realm before, and if you know anything about the team at Crank Software, you know that this is so...
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NXP's i.MX 7ULP and Crank Storyboard UIs – a winning combination for 3D graphics processing on small battery-operated devices. When I went looking for...
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Don't carry more than you need. It's a rule that applies to many things. I once bought my daughter one of those gigantic packages of crayons that cont...
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When you run an embedded application, screens are dynamic and change in response to data and animations. However, you can't see those dynamics during ...
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If you're creating applications for MCU platforms and constantly challenged to reduce your costs without compromising performance, then we know you’re...
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If you visited our website over the past month, you might have noticed that we look a bit different. Actually, we look a lot different. Like, burn the...
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Ottawa, Canada - Monday, May 20, 2019 - Crank Software, an innovator in embedded user interface (UI) software and solutions, announced today the launc...
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NXP and Crank Software are teaming up again for the second webinar in our 2-part series on embedded UI development for the industry's first crossover ...
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Back in 2000 when LG introduced the world’s first Internet-enabled fridge, it came with an electronic pen, data memo, video messaging, and scheduler, ...
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In the graphics world, much attention is always paid to the biggest and fastest Microprocessor (MPU) and Graphics Processor (GPU), but this is not alw...
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Crank was honored to showcase Storyboard's capabilities for STM32 platforms in the ST booth at Embedded World in Germany. For those of you who weren't...
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Crank is excited about the recent release of the STM32MP1 microprocessor. The STM32MP1 series aligns with Crank's impressive scalability which gives S...
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With the abundance of innovative technologies for embedded product development on display, Embedded World is one of our favorite events of the year, a...
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With the holiday season now in our rearview mirror, it's time for what many technology lovers consider the most wonderful time of the year. That's rig...
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***I asked Nick Deeble, our enterprising sales manager, to pass along his thoughts and musings regarding his recent attendance at the Smart Kitchen Su...
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Delivering high-quality design and development is important for any application, but it is especially critical when creating applications for speciali...
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The annual Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) is a must-attend event for those interested in the innovations within the food technology, cooking, and kitchen ...
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*** This post was written in collaboration with Garry, our delightful UK Field Application Engineer. Garry visited the new Crank headquarters this wee...
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Boundary Devices has an array of Single Board Computers (SBC) that leverage NXP i.MX applications processors for developing rich, high-performance emb...
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Late last year, NXP announced the i.MX RT Series, a crossover processor that is optimized for low power and high performance. Built for efficiency, co...
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It was inevitable. Eventually, just about every successful company has to take the leap and uproot and move its office. For a growing company like our...
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Here at Crank, we update and release Storyboard on a regular cadence. We generally have a major feature release followed by a maintenance/refinement r...
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Crank Software is proud to be a sponsor at NXP Connects Santa Clara, June 13-14. With a wide range of technical sessions, hands-on labs, and networkin...
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Powering billions of intelligent products, Wind River VxWorks has long been a trusted real-time operating system (RTOS) for deploying embedded product...
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Today's guest blog post is by one of our UI designers, Ahren. Ahren recently experienced a world of frustration trying to use a self-checkout kiosk. W...
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The following is a post from Fancy Dan, one of our creative and talented in-house designers. Dan uses Storyboard Suite on a daily basis to create awes...
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The following is a post from Fancy Dan, one of our creative and talented in-house designers. Dan uses Storyboard Suite on a daily basis to create awes...
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The following is a post from Nik, our awesomely bearded and multi-talented Field Application Engineer. Nik recently attended the Microchip MASTERs eve...
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The following is a post from Vanessa, one of our multi-talented and insanely busy in-house Storyboard application developers. Vanessa uses Storyboard ...
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We are often asked the question, “what platforms do you support?” or variations on the same that include operating systems, GPUs, rendering technologi...
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At any given moment last week, the more than 3000 attendees at TU Detroit were talking about autonomous vehicles, safety, and cybersecurity, while in ...
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TU-Automotive Detroit is only a week away (June 7-8, in Novi, MI), and we're busy finalizing, flashing, and packing some really cool demos for you to ...
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The following is a post from Fancy Dan, one of our creative and talented in-house designers. Dan uses Storyboard Suite on a daily basis to create awes...
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Crank Software Inc - Team at Embedded World 2017
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Whether it's commuting to and from work, chauffeuring the kids to hockey*, or running errands, we spend countless hours driving on a daily basis. Fort...
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3D elements add movement, dimension, and life to embedded applications. Aesthetics aside, they also enhance user experience and improve findability of...
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We create a lot of demo applications to show the scalability of embedded GUIs designed and developed with Storyboard Suite.
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We've always worked hard to deliver videos that showcase Storyboard Suite features, teach tips & tricks, and provide a more in-depth look at techn...
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Hello from Nuremberg, Germany!
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***Updated with new Storyboard IO feature video and tutorial below***
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***Now available On-Demand!***
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Embedded application projects usually involve a team of people, rather than a solitary jack-of-all-trades super designer* seeing an entire project thr...
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Here at Crank, we dream of a universe full of awesome application GUIs. Where students - brimming with innovative ideas and bursting with creativity -...
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This past spring, Crank Software participated in a project with Freescale (and other fine Freescale partners) to deliver the ultimate connected home e...
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While we were at Freescale Technology 2015, we shared several photos of the various Storyboard Suite embedded application GUI demos. We also posted a ...
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Earlier this year we announced the release of Storyboard Suite 4.0, giving embedded GUI design and development teams an easier and faster way to get t...
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Hello from Austin!
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FTF (Freescale Technology Forum) 2015 is next week in Austin, Texas, June 22-25, and we are gearing up for another awesome show. We will be busy this ...
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Home automation provides a convenient way to control home appliances and systems. Making life easier for homeowners, automation and saves energy by pr...
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TU-Automotive Detroit is just around the corner, June 3-4 in Novi, Michigan, so we are getting the Storyboard Suite demos ready to hit the road. This ...
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It's Demo Friday! Ok, that's probably not a thing but it is Friday and we've got a new demo for you. Today's demo further showcases the scalability of...
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It's nearly mid-May which means a couple of things:
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As we create multi-market demo applications here at Crank, we like to deploy them across multiple hardware platforms to fully test their look and feel...
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GUI design is changing, both the process and the end product a customer interacts with on a device. This is in response to a changing market. Screens ...
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Day 2 kept us busy in the booth with a lot of people coming to check out the GUI software demos on our partner's hardware and Storyboard Suite demos.
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Just a quick update from Day 1 at Embedded World 2015 - more of a photo blog today. Pictures are more fun anyway. (As the Crank writer, it pains me to...
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If you were at TI Village at CES this year you might have seen the digital automotive cockpit demo featuring Storyboard Suite. If not, be sure to chec...
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Application design usually means working with an abundance of graphics, and when designing applications for multiple screen sizes, designers have to k...
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Lately we've been busy crankin' out demo videos to show off Storyboard Suite on a variety of MCUs/MPUs and Operating Systems. The tool to design and d...