Hands-On High Performance Programming with Qt 5

Solution

So, it was the known dictum: Never block the GUI thread, only backwards—Never expect that the GUI thread won't be blocked! The solution was, of course, running the hardware heartbeat function in a separate thread.

If you are dealing with hardware, don't be afraid of threads! This can serve as a good example of the generic software principle, that is, "separation of concerns" – your UI thread is supposed to be super-responsive so that the user doesn't get the impression that your application is slow. So, anything that has a different purpose, such as communication with the hardware, has to be put in a separate thread by default!

I learned that the team tried to do this in the past, but had been bitten by some signal and slots problem, ...