October Dev update and progress

Hello Patrons!  Welcome new Patrons, this is the latest dev update for the October Beta release we're working towards, and a bit about what's next.

The goal for October has been moved to getting an updated release of 'beta' quality out...this release will be a much more stable version of what was released at the beginning of the month, but we're seeing some issues that let us know that it hasn't hit the bar we want to hit to call it the official release.  For instance, on my frame, I'm seeing occasional crashes after running it for several days (outside of odd file formats, we don't usually see crashes for weeks or even...months on our release builds).  That being said, we've made some great progress with performance issues that are getting us closer to release.  The goal is to release the final release of the plugin engine and playlist viewer in November, and then iterate on the playlist viewer as feature adds (We see the feedback in discord and are tracking it!)

The other goal that is being worked on is the documentation for plugins, and the first plugin release.  In the background further plugins are being prototyped and we're seeing what we can bring forward quickly vs. which will take more time.  The first plugin will be the pixabay site.  The goal is to make plugin installs as easy as picture packs by using the 'store system' and just supplying codes.

November-December I'll be pivoting focus on a number of items that have caused a bunch of support issues and pain.  Anytime someone downloads the image and doesn't have a smooth install setup, that's bad for the community and the project as a whole.  So we've been documenting those issues and there are a few pain points we'll address including:
1) Wifi pairing/setup - For many it works great, for many others, not so much.  We've discovered that some countries use different wifi radio frequencies, and our image has a 'base' of the US where we're located, so it's expecting to communicate on that frequency.  This has caused a bit of pain, and I want to fix it.  We'll start with a way to connect a keyboard and then allow the user to enter the wifi SSID and password directly and then work to connect the frame.  We also need a better way to handle when a frame is given to a loved one so they can set it up.

2) Hostname/Password - Establishing a 'name' for the frame would make it so that the IP address becomes less important...if i name a frame "livingroom" then I should be able to go to http://livingroom and see the configuration page.  So having this as a 'first run' thing that people can set will make that much nicer.  Also we have to make it so that users can set the password without having to ssh in, and of course having the same password for all frames isn't great.  So having that setup will also be something to work on.

3) Gesture configuration - This one popped up quite a bit this month...basically we had a few questions about disabling gestures, about adding them, etc.  We've been pointing people to the gesture.py file in the plugins folder to hand edit it, but ideally this should be configurable. This may be a December feature as it'll take some work to do right, but when done correctly it should enable other input methods (buttons connected to GPIOs, remote controls, etc)

4) Exif data - We fixed it in the last quick fix to show Exif data, but we have still planned making customizable exif data possible.

Other work going on

There is some work to customize the clock location as well as exif data, and overlay work is ongoing. We have a good spec written and it's slowly being worked through. The ideal vision is that any info can be placed anywhere on the screen...so that if you want the title of the art piece in the upper left, and the clock in the lower right, we should try to accommodate that.  Then an 'overlay' is simply another layer that happens at certain coordinates (for instance a 'now playing' banner at the top, or a 'frame' around the image.  This is something we're prototyping, but please know that we're working to do this in a way that is more powerful and flexible than other systems we've seen which have arbitrary restrictions.

We're excited and flattered at the support you provide, and are working hard to keep pushing this project further.  Plugins I think will open it up quite a bit so that we can bring on other developers and open up the system further.  If you haven't seen the Midjourney plugin (Midjourney Plugin released! | Geektoolkit on Patreon) I highly recommend working with that, it's been amazing to have running on my frame.  But that's just the beginning of the next journey we're taking this on.

Here's some of the midjourney artwork that plugin has provided that has been amazing to see:

That's all I have for now. If I missed a pain point above that you're hitting please let us know!  I should have an update out towards the end of the month with the beta release, what we were able to get into it (I see the requests for editing the order and filenames...) and then we'll work towards a stable November release!