When I started Crestron programming in 2010, you had to take two classes. One covered almost the entire Crestron catalog. All I can remember is my eyes glazing over after a couple days of that. We might have built a touchpanel layout, too. The second class actually got into SIMPL programming, but we only covered … Continue reading SIMPL Crosspoints Best Practices
I was recently asked if we could get a customer with an old PRO2 upgraded to VC4, probably to support new hardware they wanted to install. Looking at the existing system, there were a couple devices that needed a hardware controller: DSP and lighting control over RS-232, cable TV control over IR, and a Cresnet … Continue reading VC4 and SIMPL
When I started programming Crestron systems, there were two other programmers on my team. One was a senior programmer who had been doing it for years already; the other was a junior programmer who had been doing it for a year maybe? I feel like I fit into the middle slot between them quite nicely. … Continue reading SIMPL Module Best Practices
I recently received an email asking if I could document some of the things I wished I had known when I started Crestron programming. I didn't touch Crestron until the twilight years of the 2-series (2010), but it was thankfully a solid platform to learn SIMPL Windows on. I had several years of AMX under … Continue reading SIMPL Best Practices
If you're starting to get into 4-series projects but you don't have actual hardware to test with you can load SIMPL programs targeted for 4-series processors to a 3-series. I'd heard the reverse was true: a 3-series programs should run unmodified on a 4-series. But it looks like for testing purposes, you can also run … Continue reading SIMPL Tricks: 4-series
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. Here's the demo program I'm going … Continue reading FIFO Queue
Here is the final part to this module: wrapping it up and making it easy to use. SIMPL Windows is a powerful tool because it easily abstracts away a lot of details about how things happen. The way our phonebook works under the hood will be a detail we needn't worry about, it will just … Continue reading Soup-to-Nuts: Phonebook Module (Part 4)
SIMPL is an amazing tool to build control system logic with, but it can bite you sometimes in the way it evaluates a solution. Let me be clear: SIMPL is doing the right thing, but we have to train our brain to think around it to get the result we want. Here's a simple example … Continue reading SIMPL Tips and Tricks: Logic Wave Delay
Kiel the Coder 