ARCADYAN NEO SMARTBOX DRIVER

[kac]

Hello,

I would like to write a driver for my neo smartbox, but I do not have any previous experiance with writing drivers. I do know how to code in C#, HTML and a bit of CSS.

Therefore I would ask for some guidiance from where to learn from and how to actually write it, any kind of help would be apriciated.

Thank you!

[Andrew H]

You'll need a valid copy of Composer Pro to be able to test anything. Assuming you are a C4 dealer, you should have this. If you are, there are some resources on the C4 training site that explain the basics of how drivers are set up and work. You can watch those for a fundamental understanding, but I found it much more helpful and interesting to learn by poking around at the driver templates that Control4 provides. Also available for download on the C4 dealer site is a tool called DriverEditor 3.0. This tool is good to use to learn the structure of drivers as it provides a C4-specific interface in which to write your drivers and includes C4s packaging tools all in one program. I'd use it to start, but I highly recommend switching to Visual Studio Code or some other toolset once you have a basic idea of what makes a C4 driver tick.

 

There are also publicly available resources at Control4's Github page. They have their driver SDK listed there, which includes most of what you need to create your own driver. The three that I reference the most are the DriverWorks Fundamental Guide, the DriverWorks Proxy Protocol Guide, and the DriverWorks API. As mentioned, C4 does provide some driver templates that you can use to reference/ model. These are especially helpful in understanding how the C4 proxy works, and can be built upon if you are building a driver that fits one of the proxy's especially well. The last tool that I use in driver creation is the DriverPackager tool. The tools in that last link are what you need to bundle your driver into a c4i or c4z driver file for use with Control4. 

I hope this enough to get you started.