Slint is a declarative UI framework designed to run on anything — from desktop down to microcontrollers. But what does “anything” actually mean when there is no OS, no std, and the hardware leaves little room for abstraction layers or runtime overhead? This talk answers that question through the construction of a smartwatch prototype built on an ESP32-S3, using Rust no_std and Slint as the UI layer.
We’ll walk through how the Slint UI was designed and built for a real wearable form factor, and then go deeper into what it takes to make Slint run on bare-metal: what the existing embedded Rust ecosystem already provides, where the gaps are -if any-, and what Slint demands when there is no OS to lean on. From connecting display and touchscreen peripherals to wiring them into a live Slint application, we’ll see what the framework looks like at the hardware boundary.
The hardware is real, the constraints are real, and the goal is to understand what Slint and Rust’s embedded ecosystem make possible today for UI on constrained devices. If you’ve wondered what it takes to run a non-trivial GUI framework on a microcontroller in Rust, or you’re looking to push embedded Rust beyond the usual blinky-LED territory, this talk is for you.
