Two days of brainstorming, implementation and laughter – that was our “Boostcamp” 2022.

As we previously explained in the blog post “Working at CSA pays off”, we attach great importance not only to the ongoing training of our employees, but also the development of ourselves as the CSA team. Our regular Boostcamp is one way of fostering and supporting this. 

The purpose of the event, which was introduced in 2017, is to spend two days working on topics that are separate from our day-to-day business with the aim of learning new things and “boosting” the further development of our skills and focus areas. And of course having a good time together while we're at it. Each Boostcamp has a specific theme and is held at a location outside of the CSA premises. We’ve previously developed prototypes on the Weissenstein mountain and familiarised ourselves with new technologies while on a boat trip.

This year’s Boostcamp took place in the midst of a beautiful landscape at Münchenwiler Castle and focused on the topics of processes, methods and tools.
In the processes section, one group analysed our development process and the procedures we follow to develop suggestions for optimisation. This is because the tailored development of customer-specific devices, applications, and complete IoT solutions forms the core of our service portfolio. With our broad technical and methodological expertise, we are able to cover every phase of the development process. Continuous improvement is a key factor here.
Another group examined and expanded on aspects of the embedded software toolchain, in particular its virtualisation. This offers advantages such as hardware independence, reproducibility and simplified tool versioning. However, there are also a number of challenges to be solved, such as hardware access to the embedded platform and performance. The team focused on these aspects over the course of the two days.

Two more groups developed applications using technologies such as LoRaWAN on a dual-core STM32 microcontroller, the TouchGFX graphics library and the OPC-UA communication standard for secure and platform-agnostic communication, as well as a dedicated boot loader.

Meetings between the individual groups facilitated the transfer of knowledge across the whole of CSA. This in turn led to exciting discussions during the breaks about the challenges that had arisen and possible solutions. In the evening, these were then continued in a creative way over a game of billiards or darts. Of course, we also enjoyed spending time together and laughed a lot.

All in all, we had a great selection of topics, were able to achieve good results, learnt a lot and grew together as CSA.