Table of Contents

Welcome to PepperDash Essentials!

PepperDash Essentials is an open-source framework for control systems, built on Crestron's Simpl# Pro framework. It can be configured as a standalone program capable of running a wide variety of system designs and can also be used to augment other Crestron programs.

Essentials is a collection of C# libraries that can be used in many ways. It is a 100% configuration-driven framework that can be extended to add different workflows and behaviors, either through the addition of new device-types and classes, or via a plug-in mechanism. The framework is a collection of things that are all related and interconnected, but in general do not have strong dependencies on each other.

Get started

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Tip

Try Essentials v3 without any hardware. The Essentials v3 demo is a complete, simulated meeting-room system: load one program onto a 4-series processor or VC-4 server and use the room from a browser. Its tutorials walk you from loading the program to adding a source by editing the config.

Benefits

  • Runs on Crestron 4-Series and VC-4 Control System platforms
  • Reduced hardware overhead compared to S+ and Simpl solutions
  • Quick development cycle
  • Shared resources made easily available
  • More flexibility with less code
  • Configurable using simple JSON files

Collaboration

Essentials is an open-source project and we encourage collaboration on this community project. For features that may not be useful to the greater community, or for just-plain learning, we want to remind developers to try writing plugins for Essentials. More information can be found here: Plugins

Open-source-collaborative workflow

Essentials uses trunk-based development. Each major version has one long-lived trunk branch, and all work is merged into it through short-lived branches:

Branch Essentials version Target framework
essentials-3x (the default branch) 3.x .NET 8
essentials-2x 2.x .NET Framework 4.7.2
essentials-1x 1.x .NET Compact Framework 3.5

Releases are made automatically from each trunk by semantic-release. The release type comes from the commit messages, so they follow Conventional Commits: fix: makes a patch release, feat: a minor release. essentials-2x and essentials-1x are limited to their major version, but essentials-3x isn't, so a breaking change (a commit with a BREAKING CHANGE: footer; the feat!: shorthand isn't recognized) merged into it releases 4.0.0. Starting a new major version also means a new trunk and a release config change, so agree it with the maintainers first.

To contribute, follow this process:

  1. Fork this repository (More Info)
  2. Create a short-lived branch from the trunk for the version you're changing (essentials-3x for most work), named with a prefix such as feature/ or fix/ followed by a descriptive name.
    • Example: feature/add-awesomeness or fix/really-big-oops
  3. Make commits as necessary (often is better), with Conventional Commits messages such as fix: handle a missing serverUrl. Use concise, descriptive language, leveraging issue notation and/or Closing Keywords to ensure any issues addressed by your work are referenced accordingly.
  4. Keep the branch small and up to date with its trunk, so it can be merged soon.
  5. Create a Pull Request to merge your branch into the same trunk branch in the main repository.
  6. Your Pull Request will be reviewed by our team and evaluated for inclusion into the main repository.

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