Welcome August Patreons! Latest release news

Welcome new August members, and for those that continue to support us thankyou!

First some links...August members you'll want to start with the May release image.

May Release image: https://geek-toolkit.com/Releases/DynaframeProMayRelease1.zip
Instructions/quickstart: https://1drv.ms/w/s!AqxjM4_uBDJgxdYxoCkOHzDwGuD2xA?e=LCl5RJ

Discord link:
(https://discord.gg/FVAn6DyjG8)

If you're new this August you'll want to see the May post of feature updates for that release, it was quite a list!

Release status:
 If you're following along you may have noticed that the July release didn't make it out.  During final testing we hit a number of very bad issues, and decided that sticking with what we had was better than shipping something that would not work up to our standards.

That being said, the latest release is now being tested in the beta channel, and more info can be found on Discord.  The thing is, we're officially rolling out the store update system...so if you want to image a frame you start with the may image, go to the Store, and put in the code for the current release. This updates your frame to 'beta' status.  Once we have testing on it and have fixed any bugs that slipped by, we'll create a new image and make that the baseline, and then roll out the next beta and so on.

The August Beta has the following features and fixes: (Note: Must work with qwk in discord to get into the beta until this is an official release)

1) Transition timing fixes - The transition/slide timer was off on the previous beta. August fixes that.

2) Full video playback/short video repeat fixes - In the previous builds when we added the repeating video feature we broke full video playback.  This is now fixed up so you have quite a bit of flexability for video playback

3) API documentation - In the 'instructions' section you can now see many of the API's documented on how to use them. This is great for home automation enthusiasts or scritpers/coders that want to develop plugins or have finer control over the frames.  This shows you how to easily do things like control playback, turn them on  or off, control volume and more!

4) Experimental section - There is now an experimental section for upcoming features that we're working on adding. This section is meant as a preview, but will allow you to do some really fun things with your frames.  Here's some examples:
- You can play a youtube video on your frame! Simply paste the youtube, vimeo, facebook video or other web address in and click 'play web video' and they'll show up on your frame. This is great if you want to play say a 3 hour video of a beach and use your frame as a virtual window.

- Playback of web based images - This allows you to select a jpg from the internet (you'll need the full internet path) and send it to your frame. It'll cache it into a folder called 'cache' so you can use it later in a playlist.  This is handy for anyone who is doing scripting and say wants to pull down instagram images and send them to the frame

-Display of a web page - Some of you use home assistant and may want to quickly show a dashboard, or show a security camera feed. This allows you to paste the page into the address bar and then toggle 'hiding' the current images and showing the web page.   This is a very early look but it's a long term plan/design we want to enable.  The sample I used is from openprocessing so it shows some dynamic artwork...keep in mind it's not a video, but something actualy being generated live!  There's some very cool ideas there going forward.

5) Update system - As I mentioned above, to update the frame you'll be able to put in codes (if you're on the May release or later) and update the frame. This is done by putting the code in the store page on the web address, so it should be a simple update system that helps save you from downloading giant images and such.  This took some time and we're proud to have it working. If you used it in the past, the new version actually has a progress bar, and we'll continue to make updating as easy as possible

So what's next?
 Now that we have the API's documented and created, we're going to work on the next stage of plugins.  We have some features we're looking at for the next builds such as overlays as well.  Plugins will enable quite a few exciting scenarios and allow the community to really make the frames their own. :) 

As always, we appreciate the support and suggestions. We love hearing the stories in the discord and pictures of frames, and we're listening closely to the feature list (as a matter of fact, top/bottom borders for movie posters got moved way up the list because so many are requesting it).  

For those that are happy with their frames and waiting, we should have a full image update announce once the beta has been tested and we feel comfortable with it.

Thanks!

Joe