Quote Originally Posted by kachofool View Post
Thanks for the reply. Your method worked, but introduced the problem of delaying the GUI from showing up until the initialization was done.
You can increase the timeout of the timer to delay initialization. But it will then freeze your UI.

I've decided to instead use threads to implement some of the GUI's functionality. The GUI is basically a control panel for a motor and sensor that are 'coupled' together (so that the motor tries to follow the sensor position).
Bad idea, you can't use threads to operate on GUI.

* Is what I'm trying to do overkill?
Yes. You can happily do everything in one thread. Including the initialization. You just need to do it the smart way.

* Is using threads to handle user commands the norm in keeping a GUI responsive? Or am I looking at this problem wrong?
Read my article on Qt Quarterly about responsive GUIs.