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July release is ready! Get it here!
🕑 Added 2023-06-28 09:49:54 +0000 UTCJuly release is ready to go! First things first...
For newcomers, please start here:
Documentation, getting started, how to use...please start here: https://tinyurl.com/Dynaframedoc
Full image download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gzmw8xxPPaq4SQ-Kvs-w73IQ949Ar1Z3/view
For those upgrading - please place this code into the store tab:
piJulDFP-620dbec
About this release:
It's funny because I didn't expect to have a lot of changes in this release, until I went through the last two months of developer checkins and notes and filtered it down to the list below (the actual changes are about 3x as many as you see, but many are internal cleanup, future work, or administrative work). That being said, the below list represents a significant upgrade with tons of good fixes, some critical ones, as well as some fun features that we'll be showing off in future posts. This is despite losing a full month and a half of developer time as we investigated a tough video stability bug.
I'm very very happy to have some basic HEIC support...if you upload an image via the webUI that is an HEIC (used on apple products mainly) then we'll transcode it on the fly. Note that this doesn't work on NAS drives currently or file shares...please transcode before sending images. That being said, a common scenario is now working.
Futher, overlay padding, when combined with a 'frame' can be a very powerful combination when showing off images on a plain looking frame. The padding will 'indent' the image inward so that the frame doesn't cut it off. There's also some great feature suggestions from Ashley and others about prefix/postfix style additions to overlays, additional exif tags, and more.
There were a number of 'fit and finish' bugs for the web UI on mobile devices, the sync UI, Overlays and more. We're going to continue to focus on these to get the overall 'fit and finish' of the product higher.
You'll notice the infobar, when 'no image is found' is much more helpful now. Lou did some great work to get that into a state where instead of just showing an IP address, it gives helpful guided instructions.
There were a lot of internal fixes this time around, which hopefully shows up as better stability and responsiveness overall. We also did a ton of work to make processes more efficient so we can spend less time making builds and more time fixing bugs and adding features. We have an entire build system that pushes out store codes on checkins now thanks to great work QWK did. This will help us push more code in the future and bigger changes with confidence.
We were able to deliver more community based feedback in this release than any before, and my hope is to continue that trend. That's the perfect loop...users raise issues, and they see the product change and grow and become better as we work to get that feedback direclty back into the produt. I know there is a LOT of work left to do, and a lot of feedback that's been there for months. We have plans to address most of it. We just keep at it a month at a time. :)
Thankyou as always for your support! I'm VERY excited for July and the work that is planned. Please stay tuned for the mid month update and I'll let you know how it's going! I also still have some videos to film, just need a quick vacation first after this last push.
Thanks!
Joe and team
Features / changes
Added Padding to overlays
HEIC support via web upload page (auto transcoding)
User defined names added to each control (Friendly names)
Overlays - Ability to add text beofore or after an overlay
Overlays - Text Box alignment fixes to overlay UI
Overlays - Added new Modal dialogs to clean up UI
Overlays - Exif tag dropdown now includes all 'common' exif tags
Added focus indicators to config page
Infobar UI now shows helpful text when 'no images found' scenarios occur
Fixes to render Web UI better on mobile screens (various pages)
When SSIDs are loading, config page now indicates it with 'loading' dialogs
"Remove" button added to frame sync page to allow for removing of individual frames
FileSystemWatcher fixes to better detect when a file is added
SetUpFileSystemWatcher now accounts for top level SearchDirectories, to parity ScanAndAdd database locations. This was preventing us from seeing newly created directories.
In scenarios where files were changed while the Playlist engine was paused (Example: Screen Off), they will now be picked up
Fixed Multiple database timers if playlists were turned on/off rapidly
Critical fixes
- Fixed crash to config page if device didn't have wifi onboard (pi2 scenario)
- Fixes for older overlays to provide default values
- isOfflineMode was fixed to now work
Future work
- Removed dependancy of QRcoder, moved to Skia
Minor fixes:
- Responsiveness updates for webUI
- Get resolution returns proper resolution
- SetAudioPlaybackDevice sets audio to 0 in scenaarios where audio is disabled (#247)
- Update Current File validates file path
- Fixed fading on overlays
- Trace logging added for skipped file
- updated avalonia to 10.19
- Store unzip errors will now be reported to the store UI
- Removed 'image info' from infobar and UI. Overlays superscedes this
- Set all log comments in FileSystemHelpers to trace
Comments
I'm curious if this feature has been mentioned or requested which is current weather of his/her city (simple info like 65F San Diego, in opposite side of date overlay). Enjoy this very much so far!
Joe Farro
Glad you're setup! The demo is 3 different dynaframes using the 'sync' feature. So 3 pis, 3 displays. The pictures though I had to manually split/edit to do that. I hope one day to have a better solution there
Just joined as the first timer of patreon. Downloaded the image and installed on newly received Pi4B and paired with SATA drive instead of slow SD card. I'm dying to ask you how you setup 3 displays in the demo. I'm thinking about doing the same thing. Thanks!
Joe Farro
Yay welcome! You came in at a great time, you'll find it's come a long way since the youtube video!
Just joined after finally receiving my pi, looking forward to it! Thanks!
Joe Farro
We plan on exposing this through plugins, but yes that is something we want to enable. Not just unsplash but any source that someone wants to extend it to
could you add the ability to connect to unsplash api etc for other image locations?
