September Status update

I want to update everyone on what's been going on for the project for September.  I just came back from a family vacation, so I'm about to go heads down on development again to finish up what I expect will be a beta release for the end of September, with a goal of releasing a full update in October.  

Here's some basic updates on some of the latest items we're working on:

1) Plugins - I have a prototype of a plugin integrated with the playlist page that allows for web content (from pixabay for this particular one) to be mixed with local content. I hope to ship this in beta, but I'm still wrapping up some work on it. This work is tied to allowing things like syncing with kodi/mame/sonos/spotify as well as pulling from sources like instagram/deviant art. The goal is to get the community the tools to tightly integrate with the engine.

2) Audio selection - Lou (bdlou on discord) is working hard to get audio selection working. This would allow the analog audio jack on the pi to work. That may sound simple, but we are working hard to ensure that we can work on future hardware (That effort is constantly underway). 

3) Overlays - We have the basics of an overlay working...this is related to the feature requests for movie posters to have ratings and 'now playing'.  The reason this is so hard for us is that we are not a movie poster frame...so we want to design this the right way so that it can work for whatever content is shown.  Please note on a pi we are currently only able to do this over images currently.

4) Playlists - The engine had to be overhauled to support plugins, and is now JSON based. This will allow for 'saving a playlist' in the future, and I'm working on allowing for custom orders of playlists.  This work also is allowing for a new tab which allows visual representation of what is in a playlist (with thumbnail images) and will lead us to the ability to have a delete button (finally!).  

5) Bugfixes - There are numerous  bugfixes...Exif data, permissions on files and shares, performance tweaks for pi3s, comitup removal/readding that are going on.  Some of these are in the current September Beta

Those are the current workstreams. I know there are big ticket items not on that list...(turning the frame on/off at certain times) but we aren't forgetting about them, they're just not in the current batch of work.  

I'll be heads down on the project the next few days, and am committing that I'll show a video of what the plugin engine looks like once I get it a bit cleaner. I think you're REALLY going to like what's coming. Not all of the above will make it into the beta, or even into the October release, but we are working hard on each of these and making progress and you'll see much of it show up now, and the rest soon after.