Create a plugin project (Windows)

Overview

To begin the Loupdeck demo plugin walkthrough, we need to create a .NET project for the plugin. There are two alternatives to achieve this:

• Download the demo plugin skeleton project from DemoPlugin/Step01. This plugin does not have any functionality yet, but it is already visible in the Loupedeck configuration UI.

• Create the demo plugin project using the Loupedeck Plugin Tool. The generated project contains already some functionality as an example.

The instructions below describe the latter alternative on Windows.

Steps

1. Make sure that the Loupedeck software is installed.

2. Stop Loupedeck.

3. Download and unpack the Loupedeck Plugin Tool for Windows from Loupedeck Developer Page. In this instruction, we assume that you unpacked the tool to ~/Downloads directory.

4. Open the Command Prompt.

5. Change the current directory to the location where you want to create the plugin project, for example:

   cd %USERPROFILE%\source
   

6. Choose a name for your plugin. We use "Demo" in this example.

7. Execute the following command:

   "C:\Program Files (x86)\Loupedeck\Loupedeck2\LoupedeckPluginTool.exe" generate -name=Demo
   

8. DemoPlugin directory is created.

9. Go to this directory:

   cd DemoPlugin
   

10. Start the plugin solution:

    start DemoPlugin.sln
    

11. Visual Studio opens with the DemoPlugin solution.

12. Build the solution to verify that it compiles without errors.

13. Note that Debug build binaries go right to the folder from where Loupedeck loads the 3rd party plugins (%LOCALAPPDATA%\Loupedeck\Plugins\<PLUGINNAME>)

    Build started...
    1>------ Build started: Project: DemoPlugin, Configuration: Debug Any CPU ------
    1>  DemoPlugin -> C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Loupedeck\Plugins\DemoPlugin\DemoPlugin.dll
    ========== Build: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========
    

14. Start the Loupedeck software. Wait until the Loupedeck configuration UI opens.

15. Unhide the "Demo" plugin on the "Hide and show plugins" tab of the Action panel. The plugin should be now shown in the UI.