Masters 2024 is a wrap! Great sessions this year. The 3 hour blocks worked well to cover topics with just enough lecture and lab.
Crestron had an Events phone app this year to organize schedules. It was handy to reference, but I did miss just having my schedule printed on the back of my badge, too. Low-tech works well, too!
Having a VC-4 session first was a great idea. This was a chunk of time set aside to make sure everyone had a working controller, could load programs to it, etc. Iron out all the bugs first so that we didn’t waste time on this during other classes (where it would have really derailed the class focus).
Getting time to play with an existing HTML5 layout in Construct was good, and seeing the workflow demonstrated was helpful. I haven’t had the best experience with Construct yet, but the new version looks to have fixed a lot of the bugs I’ve been bitten by. Also getting to see the Early Access Preview with SIMPL programming was cool.
We finally got a session where we worked on an HTML5 project in Angular. Not using the CH5 template so much, just focusing on how to take an Angular project and get it to play nicely on a Crestron touchpanel. There was a similar project handed out using React, but I’m glad the instruction focused on one and didn’t try to run through both since that would have been beyond confusing.
An advanced session with Yuri and Toine was a chance to ask (nearly) any questions we wanted, and then work on a C# project that used some features of contract programming. I felt bad that I didn’t submit any questions for this session ahead of time, will try to contribute next time if this type of session is offered again.
My final class was a C# programming session that went over breaking free of joins and programming by contract. It also showed how the driver framework can be used to quickly load and test new drivers without needing to recompile anything.
Overall, I had a great time this week. I spectated at the Hackathon (will try participating next year), and the social mixer at Paradise Cove was a nice touch to get away from the resort for a few hours.
I’m sure I’ll dive deeper into some of the topics and hopefully have time to do write ups over the next few weeks.
Kiel the Coder 
Ha! That was quick. I’m still on the plane on the way back and you already have a post about masters. I agree. Having the VC4 class first was good. This was my first Masters since 2019 and was great to see people. In person learning is way better than online. I wish there was more time to ask questions during some classes (I got lost during the API class and it was hard to catch up). But well. what to expect but “drinking from the fire hose” Great time over all and kudos to the team for putting the event together and to Serena for fighting off the Andrew the Gator 😂
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I think my experience every year has been, “I wish I had more time to dig into this!” But then I’ll revisit class files weeks from now and start tweaking them, breaking them, fixing things, etc. so it takes time to fully absorb. I hope that’s what Crestron intends! The bit with the alligator was shocking at first because Rich seemed so serious, but glad it was just a bit of silliness. Does explain why we kept seeing Andrew at the events.
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