Progress on the next Beta

Hello everyone, and welcome new Patreons!   I really appreciate the lively discord discussions and comments  I've gotten. If you have any issues getting the latest build going please message me, I'm here to help!  

I want to take a moment to talk a bit about the next build, and where we are.  The team goes into 'shipping mode' which is where we push for quality to get a build out to you, and then we go into 'experiment mode' which is where we break everything again while we work on the next feature set.  Right now we're deep in that work, but even then we've got some great things we've figured out that we're going to work on stabilizing for the next build:

1) Working on a bullseye based build...the current build of Dynaframe is based on Debian Buster, which is an older distro.  It was brough to our attention that Bullseye may help us achieve HEIC support (iphone/apple products use this format natively) and there would be some other benefits we can chase (we're eternally trying to get the infobar working on top of videos).  We currently have a bullseye build up and running, however we're fighting some bugs currently, but this work is happening.

2) Infobar updates and Exif fixes - A number of you have brought up wanting to have Exif data supported, and we hear you and are working on it.  Exif data is embedded in image files and can contain anything from the photographers name to the location the image was taken. We have Exif data showing in the infobar now in the internal builds, and are working on a UI to allow for selecting what values you'd like to show.  There will still be a limit of 3 lines of data currently, but you'll be able to select say 'title, author, location' or 'date taken, location, title' so you'll have SOME customization.

3) Location data - EXIF datas location is currently longitude and latitude based, which isn't very...fun.  What you've asked for is a conversion to get that from a longitude / latitude to something more friendly, say a city/country.  We've figured out a way to get this working...and the best thing is it's all offline...so no webservice or cost is needed...if the city has over 1000 population, then we'll show the city name (sorry small town folks...you'll get the nearest city that has over 1000 shown).

4) Playlist enhancements - This is actually part of the plugin engine, but we've changed the playlist to be entirely JSON based, including the exif data. This will expose an API that can be called to allow for a very particular playlist with particular info to play...say you wnat to show certain images with certain text...this will be supported via this system.  You can imagine combined with say a plugin that gets data from instagram, facebook, flickr, etc....this can enable the frame to do quite a few things in the future.

The other benefit is it makes it easy for us to provide a 'playlist' in the webUI, so you can see what file is currently playing, what is playing 'next', and manage the playlist or even delete files.  

5) Multiple minor bug fixes have already been added - Things like the rendering on the home page to fit correctly, the sci fi theme has been fixed up, the dropdowns are now keeping state correctly, and more.  Minor things, but they add to the fit and finish and are completed already.

That's the latest.  We're still deep into the code, so I wouldn't expect a new release till September at this point, but it's looking to be a good one!  Please note that the above is our current work, it may not reflect what we are able to ship as some things may have to be pulled back if we can't get them stable.  Likewise, we may add more things as the opportunities present themselves.  We know that overlays for instance are very much in demand, as is an on/off timer, and we're taking a look at those as well.

Finally, Sync support is planned and we are working on getting it back in. The same engine rewrite that broke it has made it a bit complicated, but we'll get it figured out.

Thanks everyone, if you have questions never feel shy about messaging me or finding us on the Discord.  It's starting to be a bit of a party there with people sharing ideas, features, and even some images of frames (We LOVE those btw).  Let us know what you like and what you want..as you can see above we turn those wishes into workitems and are working to bring them to you!