Example projects
Two complete projects ship with the editor, and they are the fastest way to see how the pieces fit together. Open one, look at how it is built, change something, download it.
They are not toys cut down for a manual. Both are real projects that get extended as features arrive — which is also why they are worth re-opening after an update.
Find them in ProgramData\ctrl32\examples, or open them from the editor's welcome screen.
Thermostat — Olimex ESP32-EVB
A wall thermostat on a 2.8" portrait screen, driving the two relays the board has. There is no temperature sensor on it: a simulated measurement sweeps the range, so the heating relay audibly clicks around the setpoint the moment you download it.
What it shows: a complete small project. Ladder logic with hysteresis, a screen somebody can actually operate, a manual mode, a trend, alarms — and a WEBview page shaped for a phone.
The home screen. The gauge is the measurement, the buttons below adjust the setpoint, and the switch turns automatic mode on and off.
Manual — every actuator on its own, which is what you want during commissioning and when something has stopped and you need to know which part still works.
The trend, a few seconds after starting — the chart fills as the board samples. Both traces are recorded in the board, so the history exists whether or not anybody is watching, and the current values sit under the chart where they can be read without interpreting the lines.
States and motion. Two lamps on one variable — one from a named colour set, one with its own colours — a panel whose background is the state, and a marker that travels the scale as the setpoint moves.
Worth copying from it:
- the hysteresis block driving a relay — the smallest complete control loop there is
- a manual screen that mirrors the automatic one
- a WEBview page designed for a phone rather than copied from the board
Showcase — STM32F746 Discovery
The same runtime on entirely different silicon: an STM32F7 with a 4.3" landscape screen, ethernet and a touch glass.
What it shows: that a project is not tied to a chip family. The same languages, the same widgets, the same pack format — a different board underneath.
The main screen. Vector icons, switches bound to variables, and a value in a large font — the fastest thing on any screen to read.
Info. The line of accented text is deliberate — Príliš žltučký kôň úpel ďábelské ódy is the proof that the font carries the characters your language needs, which is a thing to find out at your desk rather than on the finished board.
Below it, bit access — a switch writing one bit of a word that the logic is hammering at the same time, and neither losing the other's work.
The states screen, and the picture worth understanding: four lamps on four bits of one 16-bit variable, with no logic between them. Two bits are driven by the program at different rhythms, one by a switch on another screen, one by the switch beside them. Three independent writers into one word, and none of them can undo another.
Worth copying from it:
- a row of lamps reading a status word — exactly how a drive's status is displayed
- an alarm defined once and shown by a lamp and an alarm table
- the layout of a landscape screen that stays readable at arm's length
Which one to start from
| You have | Open |
|---|---|
| an ESP32 board, with or without a screen | Thermostat |
| an STM32 board | Showcase |
| no hardware yet | either — both run in simulation |
Neither needs anything wired up to be useful. Open it, press Simulate and the logic runs on your PC with the screens live, so you can learn the whole tool before deciding what to buy.
How to use one as a starting point
- Open the example and Save As under your own name.
- Change the target board in the project settings to yours.
- Delete the screens you do not want. Nothing else breaks — a screen is
only referenced by the
navbuttons pointing at it. - Keep the variables you need, rename the rest.
That is usually faster than starting from an empty project, because the scaffolding you would have built anyway — a theme, a font, a navigation row, an alarm table — is already there and already consistent.
The examples are the regression tests too
These projects are compiled and rendered on every build, which is why they stay current. If an example does something the documentation does not describe, the example is the one telling the truth.