QP-nano Tutorial

This QP-nano Tutorial is adapted from Chapter 1 of Practical UML Statecharts in C/C++, Second Edition
by Miro Samek, the founder and president of Quantum Leaps, LLC.

This Tutorial presents an example project implemented entirely with the QP-nano event-driven platform using UML state machines and the event-driven paradigm. The example application is an interactive "Fly 'n' Shoot"-type game. My aim in this section is to show the essential elements of the method in a real, nontrivial program, but without getting bogged down in details, rules, and exceptions. At this point, I am not trying to be complete or even precise, although this example is meant to show a good design and the recommended coding style. I don't assume that you know much about UML state machines, the UML notation, or the event-driven programming. I will either briefly introduce the concepts, as needed, or refer you to the the Practical UML Statecharts in C/C++, Second Edition book for more details. The example "Fly 'n' Shoot" game is based on the "Quickstart" application provided in source code with the Cortex-M3 LM3S811 evaluation kit (see Figure 2-2) from Luminary Micro (http://www.luminarymicro.com). I was trying to make the "Fly 'n' Shoot" example behave quite similarly to the original Luminary Micro "Quickstart" application, so that you can directly compare the event-driven approach with the traditional solution to essentially the same problem specification.

• 1. Installing QP-nano and Building QP-nano Applications
• 2. Let's Play
• 3. The main() Function and the qpn_port.h Header File
• 4. Designing an Event-Driven Application
• 5. Elaborating State Machines of Active Objects
• 6. Signals, Events, and Active Objects
• 7. Coding Hierarchical State Machines
• 8. Using the Built-in Real-Time Kernels
• 9. QP-nano Memory Usage
• 10. Comparison to the Traditional Approach
• 11. Summary

Note:

To explain diagrams or listings, I place numbers in parentheses at the interesting elements of the diagram or the listing. I then use these labels in the left margin of the explanation section that immediately follows the diagram. Occasionally, to unambiguously refer to a specific element of a particular diagram from sections of text other than the explanation section, I use the full reference consisting of the figure number followed by the label. For example, Figure 4(12) refers to the element (12) in Figure 4.

Next: 1. Installing QP-nano and Building QP-nano Applications

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