GUIDE: Beta Testing Chowmain Crestron Home Drivers
Overview
This document covers the manual installation, testing and removal of Crestron Home beta drivers. If you want to replace the driver from the online database, or if it's not currently there, you can manually install the driver. There are a few requirements to get started detailed below.
Connection and Installation
Requirements
You will need to access the console of the processor and also upload files via SFTP. Please
make sure you have the following installed.
- Crestron Toolbox
- SFTP software, CyberDuck or Filezilla
The examples in this document use CyberDuck, which can be downloaded from https://cyberduck.io/
Connection Setup
To transfer the files you will need to use an SFTP connection to the processor. It will require your admin username and password (the same ones you use to log in to the setup app)
Manual Installation
To manually install you will need to first copy the driver onto your Crestron Home processor. You should have received a zip file that contains the driver PKG file. There may be other files you
have been sent but the only one you need to send is the PKG file.
To make the driver available you need to copy the file into the import folder which is located in
/user/ThirdPartyDrivers/Import
Using the Beta Driver
Once you have copied over the file you need to trigger the processor to import it. To do this, open the setup App and go to
Step 2 - Pair Devices
Next select Drivers
At this stage you should notice a spinner at the bottom of the list next to the text Updating Drivers
At this stage the processing is loading in the new driver you copied into the Import folder. This process can take about 10 seconds, during which you can keep navigating to the driver location, or simply wait until the spinner stops.
Verifying you have the correct driver
To verify you have the correct driver it's always best to check the version. You may need to reach out to Chowmain to verify the driver version so you can validate this against the version
you can see installed.
NOTE: if this driver is already available in the online database, this step is even more important as there will be a version available to your project immediately, even if you haven’t downloaded it to the Import folder.
You can check the version by clicking the information icon (the i in a circle) next to the add button for the driver.
You will be presented with a Driver Information screen that will list the current version. You may need to check the release vs beta versions to make sure you are using the correct version.
If the version does not look correct, you may need to try the Import step again. Alternatively, it could still be loaded, so wait a little longer and check this Driver Information screen aga
Updating a beta driver
It is likely that changes may happen during the beta and you will want to test a newer version. The first step in updating the driver is to remove the existing driver - if you don’t complete this step it will continue to use the existing driver, even if you load a new version into the Import folder.
Remove is driver is standard way, using the remove chevron next to the driver name,
You can now load the new driver onto the system. To do this just repeat the Import and version testing steps.
Now if you try to re-add the driver you will see a message letting you know the system needs to be restarted. Follow the prompts and restart the system. Once the system has restarted you can add the driver again as usual - but make sure to double check it is using the new version
Removing a beta driver
If you wish to remove a beta driver can can simply delete it from the system using the standard delete action detailed above. TO be certain it has been completely removed you can try to re-add, as in the step above and trigger the reboot, but in this case just don’t copy the driver over to the Import folder. Once the processor has rebooted the driver will be gone.
Replacing a driver with the database version
If a version of the driver already exists in the database you will notice a cloud download button next to the Information button in the Pair Devices screen. If you select this the version from the
database will replace the one you have imported.
Testing and Console Commands
To effectively test the module it is likely you will need to capture logging information from the console. You can connect to the console of your processor using Crestron Toolbox in the same fashion as every other crestron processor.
With the advent of 3.19 there are now two paths you can take to enable logging, and it depends on the state of the driver. The next section describes how to do it with the new CH commands, but if that doesn’t work follow the section section.
Enabling Debug
Once you have a connection you will need to enter some console commands to be able to see the logging information.
The first step is to turn on the program commands by entering
ENABLEPROGRAMCMD
at the prompt. This will allow you to use the debugging commands and see the log lines printed to the console. You only have to do this once (some of the other commands need to be entered
each time).
Once you have done this the details you get will depend on the driver's build. If you have a debug version then you will very likely see quite a lot of log information being produced immediately. If you don’t then you may need to specifically turn on the debug commands.
NOTE: if any of the console commands don’t work then you may need to enter this command again.
Using CH command
The CH command is used for systems that are at 3.18 or higher. If you are using firmware older than that then follow the instructions in the next section.
The logging command looks like this
CP4-R> ch drivers logger <level> <driver_name>
To get a list of available drivers type
CP4-R>ch drivers logger
Drivers Debug
Drivers\Capabilities Debug
Drivers\Catalog Debug
Drivers\Denkovi SmartDen IP-16R Debug
Drivers\HostManager Debug
Drivers\InterProcessor Debug
Drivers\Uninitialized Debug
This will list the various levels for each of the drivers you have loaded and give you their names,
To change the level of the Denkovi SmartDen IP-16R driver to debug for example you would type
CP4-R>ch drivers logger debug Denkovi SmartDen IP-16R
Driver Instance
To enable debugging you will need to work out the driver instance. This is an ID number that is required for the the logging commands. To get the list of drivers on the processor you will need to run
CCDINFO
This will return a list of all of the installed drivers on your system.
This list has entries that look like this
--- Driver Info for Driver ID 28---
Driver: Nice - DMBM
Type: Platform
GUID: 3d11ba47-a54b-499b-8af3-4f33997a2b32
SDK Version: 8.0.0
Version: 1.0.1.0 (07/26/2022 00:00:00)
Using RADCommon, Version=15.0.1.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=null
Using RADCommon, Version=15.0.1.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=null
--- Driver Info End ---
The key is to identify the exact driver you need to use, which is typically done by identifying the driver name in the first line. The actual info we need is the Driver ID, 28 in the example above.
For most drivers this is fairly straightforward as there will only be a single entry for the driver, unless you have loaded multiple versions, in which case they are numbered in the order you
loaded them.
For a Platform driver you will have a single entry for the Platform and then, depending on the driver, many entries for each of the paired devices (the ones that appear in the paired devices
folder). The numbers follow the order they are loaded into the Paired Devices folder, so you may need to keep tabs on that to work out which one you need.
Most of the drivers we produce have the logging in the Platform driver only, so it's likely you can ignore all the paired devices.
Enabling Logging from the Console
To enable logging on a driver you need to know it’s ID. If you haven’t already, read the section above for details on how to get the ID.
To enable logging, you need to enter
CCDLOGGING XX ON
At the console, where the red XX would be replaced by the driver ID. So if the driver ID was 28 then you would need to enter
CCDLOGGING 28 ON
As soon as you enter this you will immediately see logging information in the console. Disabling Logging from the Console To disable logging, you need to enter
CCDLOGGING XX OFF
At the console, where the red XX would be replaced by the driver ID. So if the driver ID was 28 then you would need to enter
CCDLOGGING 28 OFF
Completely removing a beta driver
If you want to completely remove the driver you must first remove it using the setup app. That will take it out of the project but if you want to completely remove it you can enter the following
command.
GRACEFULREBOOT
This will clean up and then reboot your processor.
Capturing and Sending Logs
Once you have some logging information in the console you may need or want to send it back to us for review. To capture the logs you can either copy and paste the log entries into a text file
or using the Logging, Save Buffer option to save the entire console session.
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