Why Coding Matters for Automation

Imagine yourself turning on a light switch, when you move the switch the on position you have a reasonable expectation that a light will go on, and when it doesn’t, you know something has gone wrong. This is why quality code is instrumental to a home or office automation system, it turns a complicated system with multiple levels and components into something as second nature as turning on the lights. 

To myself and the other engineers at GMI take pride in our code, our years of experience programming Crestron systems have given us a war chest of coding options that allow us to be flexible and create something truly unique for our customers. I like to look at coding like writing a story, every programming feature has a beginning, a plot and an end.

As Albert Einstein said “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Simple though does not mean easy, this is where the name #DoneRightNotEasyCrew comes from, we aren’t just programming commands, but full fledged conversations between gear who oftentimes are speaking different programming languages. The more streamlined the code, the better the systems will work at this high of a level.

Quality code turns a complicated system with multiple levels and components into something as second nature as turning on the lights.

Of course, not all code is the same. You may have heard the recent news about Sonos altering their programming language and stymieing integrators as they reacted to the change. Our experience gives us the opportunity to write something in many different ways and cater systems specifically to our customers needs. Why worry about working in an out of the box environment when we can design a custom system pulling each component that the customer likes for truly one of a kind designs.

When you work on high level systems and high expectation clients, you’re expected to have a mastery of everything that you do. Our simple and refined code has given us access to higher levels of Crestron support than a typical out of the box integration company. If needed Crestron will send engineers, create custom firmware, or even spot check a new line of code we create. If we only worked with a configurator or some out of the package code we would lose the ability to control the time frame and deliver service to our customers.

In our industry, expectations are high. If you can’t go back in and troubleshoot a granular level, you can’t win, simple as that.