programming – Page 6 – Kiel the Coder

CH5: Full Project

tl;dr Yes, I actually go through each page of my mock up and try to make it work in CH5 so there’s a lot of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in this post. I really wanted to link to a GitHub repo so you could download the files and follow along, but Crestron puts a copyright notice at the top of every generated file saying you can’t distribute them. So to be safe, I’m only including the bits here that I rewrote. Also, I plan to write a follow up post to this one that explores my thoughts trying to use the CH5 framework, so that might actually make for a better read anyway. But, if you want to follow my struggles trying to hammer HTML and CSS into shape, be my guest…

OK I think we’ve toyed around enough and can jump in feet first to CH5. In this post, I’m going to create a full touchpanel layout using Crestron’s Shell Template. We’ll focus on the look and feel in this post and deal with the control side later. That way, we don’t have to continually load to a touchpanel just to see if what we’re doing looks correct.

CH5: Back to Basics

Now that we’ve built the sample project and loaded it to a touchpanel successfully, let’s break it! I’m going to be referencing Using the Crestron Template Project to dive deeper into the code.

CH5: Getting Started

I haven’t thought about Crestron’s HTML5 since attending Virtual Masters last year. At the time, I was very eager to learn the next generation of UI development. My enthusiasm was squelched a bit when I realized:

I needed a TSW-xx60 panel to test with (CH5 XPanel wouldn’t be released until February 2021 it turns out)
I could use the JavaScript emulator library, but then you end up doubling the amount of work to test a panel layout
My limited understanding of web development was not enough to separate the CH5 bits from the underlying framework
Crestron didn’t anticipate an audience that had never touched modern JavaScript

So, I filed it away and decided I would return to it once I had time to spare. So here I am, 10 months later (with an actual TS-770 now) and ready to learn some CH5!

Soup to Nuts: Cisco Codec – Part 4

In the final part of this series, we’ll finish by adding some basic functionality to the module we created in Part 3. Then we’ll look at how to drop this module into a real program and debug it when things go wrong. Lastly, we’ll consider how we could extend this module in the future.

FIFO Queue

The FIFO Queue is a handy symbol in SIMPL Windows. It’s not one I use regularly though, so I’m always a little confused by its operation. FIFO stands for “First In, First Out.” As you add elements to the queue, they are removed in the order they were added.

Soup to Nuts: Cisco Codec – Part 3

In this part, we’ll extend our Device class and create a subclass specialized for talking to Cisco devices. Then we’ll work on properly wrapping our SIMPL+ module into a SIMPL User Macro.

Soup to Nuts: Cisco Codec – Part 2

In the last part, we got a basic SSH connection working to our Cisco codec. Now we’re going to try sending and receiving some commands!

Soup to Nuts: Cisco Codec – Part 1

In this series of posts, we’ll develop a basic module for controlling Cisco Room Kit devices. It can be used in SIMPL Windows or SIMPL# Pro programs. It won’t be as exhaustive as the official module available from the Application Market, but it will be enough to handle most video conferencing tasks.

Delegates vs Events

Trying to glean some notes from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/distinguish-delegates-events. All text is from that page (emphasis is mine).

Debugging SIMPL# Pro (3-series)

I’ve run into a problem in my Standard UI program: a button that used to work like a toggle is now toggling on and off immediately. Is it getting called twice? How am I going to track this error down?