The Raspberry Pi in combination with an inexpensive touch screen, makes a perfect controller for a machine or game console. Let’s see how we can use Java and JavaFX to build a test application which also communicates with the pins of the Raspberry Pi to control a LED. We have done something before already in the post “Light Up your Christmas Tree with Java and Raspberry Pi”, so what’s new?
Today I could give my talk “Having fun with Java and JavaFX on the Raspberry Pi” at the JFXDays. Normally this event takes place in Zurich, but this year also went virtual because… well because of 2020… I’m honored that my talk was part of this two-day event with a lot of talks by all the people who are the driving forces in the JavaFX community!
The post “Starting a JavaFX Project with Gluon Tools” shows you how to start a Gluon Mobile Multiview project with a few clicks in IntelliJ IDEA thanks to the “Gluon plugin”. In this post, we will use such a project and build it with GitHub Actions as a native application for Windows, MacOS, iOS, Linux, and Android from one single code base!
On foojay.io you can already find two posts by Carl Dea to get you started with JavaFX: Beginning JavaFX Applications with IntelliJ IDE: step-by-step how to start a new JavaFX project without any tools, are by using the Maven and Gradle tools. A JavaFX App on ZuluFX in 60 Seconds: how to use a popular distribution from Azul to build a JavaFX HelloWorld Application in 60 seconds.
Confused about the release cycles of OpenJDK and OpenJFX and the relationship between them? Read on! OpenJDK Since 2018, Java switched to a 6-months release cycle. Every new release brings new finished features, but also “preview” ones which are not finished yet. These can be enabled with a flag (java --enable-preview) to allow developers to start experimenting with them and provide feedback to the developers to further improve these so they can become available in one of the next releases.
After my virtual conference talk “Java and JavaFX on the Raspberry Pi” at the “Oracle Groundbreakers APAC Virtual Tour 2020”, I got in touch with some people who were working on JavaFX 3D in the past, and were curious how that would behave on the Raspberry Pi. Only one way to find out!
In a previous post “Installing Java and JavaFX on the Raspberry Pi”, you can read how to install BellSoft LibericaJDK to be able to run JavaFX applications with a graphical user interface on a Raspberry Pi with ARMv7 or ARMv8 processor. But this won’t work for some (older) versions of the Raspberry Pi as these use an ARMv6 processor which is not compatible with the default OpenJDK 11 which is part of Raspberry Pi OS.