Developer Blog - Closing out Febrary

Greetings, This is a behind the scenes of what I'm working on so you will know what features should be coming in the next few months.

1) Working on content / Artists

I've been working hard to try to get artists onboard, and the honest reality is I'm still too small to get noticed by many that could provide quality content. So I'm taking a different approach...instead of trying to get the amazing content on platforms like deviant art, instagram, plotagraphs etc. into the web store....I'm working on bringing acess to those apps to Dynaframe.  I had a huge breakthrough in the last few days that may unblock that from happening, and I'll be spending some time next month doing testing to see how far I can take it.  Having access to a way to properly use the APIs from those sites may open the frames up to being able to display live feeds of content that rotate through. This is in very early stages, but one of the biggest blockers...how to authenticate and do it in a way that the API wouldn't get shutdown...has been solved.

2) Working on content packs

The recent poll told me some great info on what types of content you're looking for, and I'm started gathering that into content packs to go into the store. This is a very manual process and takes time currently but that's kind of the point..I do the work and publish them so you all can benefit and easily install content! (vs. all of us having to do it!).  I want to do it right however and get the .exif data updated so that when images show such as say an image from Nasa, if you bring up the infobar you'll be able to see the info clearly

3) A simple updater

I realize that having to image a card and resetup content each time is going to get old fast. A simple update system is needed so you can put in a code and get an update. This is due for the next release (March) so that future releases will be painless. This requires a bit of planning and design, most of which was done during February so I'm excited to turn this around.   The design for this is going to be setup so that you can move forward and backwards through builds...they'll essentially all be installed at the same time. This will let me do things like release betas with incomplete features so you can try them and give feedback, but then easily switch back to stable builds.  For those that are licensing..this will allow you to get builds and provide feedback easily as well.

4) Plugin system

This is currently looking like an April feature, but I am working hard on providing plugin support.  Early plugins include weather, Kodi, and Sonos as well as some surprises.  But again, looking like April to have this ready.

5) Playlist update

The playlist system needs an overhaul. I've had multiple requests for the ability to show the entire playlist and to be able to rearrange it, delete items, or have more control.  I'm looking into this, most likely April unless I can get it in during March

6) Animated Gifs

I actually did this work this month and planned on releasing it in March, however there is a memory corruption bug in a module that I'm using that is blocking this. I'm investigating fixing it myself, but if I can't the developer that owns it says he can look into it at the end of March most likely.  So sadly while I tried to surprise everyone with this as a March release, this is looking like April.  When it comes it will support cross fading and syncing. I spent a few too many nights trying to fight through this because it is so close, but I just don't know the codebase that I'm leveraging well enough, and it'd take too long to do on my own.  

As you can see there is a ton of stuff going on.  This post doesn't even cover the work of debugging and tracking down issues, the second February release, plus website wrangling and other stuff going on in the background. I expect March to be even busier, but as these items come online I'm VERY excited at the near future of this project as we should see accelerated feature growth and development with the plugin engine, and with the update system it'll be easier for you to keep up with the new updates as well!

I want to thankyou for all of your support.  If you hit issues please let me know so I can support you and work to fix them.