Geektoolkit

May Mid Month Updates

So already halfway through this month we have some cool updates and features to show of what's coming in the next release (We'll target beta a week before month end and then release once it's validated if all goes well).

Lets talk about three things in this post..HEIC Support, Overlay Padding, and file format filtering.


HEIC Support 

HEIC is an amazing format iOS devices have moved to.  We have struggled to figure out a way to support it, and...

A note about plugins

This is mainly targeted at developers, but I know some of you have been waiting for plugins and I'm working on delivering on some past promises that have been held up.  Here's the status:

A few months ago I promised plugins, and had written an entire engine around them. I want to give an update on where that is for the project as it's an important one, and it's about to undergo a major change.

Plugins were originally designed to be code based addons that would allow users t...

Question for iphone users about HEIC (Feedback request)

We have a possible path that we've found as we took another shot at HEIC (An apple format that has given us difficulty up till now).  We have a way of possibly doing a conversion on upload of an image file which would make it appear as if HEIC works for those uploading from a phone.

The question is...if someone has a NAS, how would they want this handled?  If we do the conversion and a person has say 5000 photos from an iphone, then we'd create 5000 files...on a rapsberry pi ...

May Release is here!

The May release is ready!  

Getting Started:
Please start here, it is a full document on how to download, install, and operate the system.
https://tinyurl.com/Dynaframedoc

Here are the images for May:

"XZ" image - NEW!  This image no longer needs to be unzipped! You can down-load this, and then use Balena Etcher to write it directly to an SD card.

Major documentation update!

The following link will be used for documentation for the future:
https://tinyurl.com/Dynaframedoc

The documentation went from about 5 pages to over 32, and I'm still not done, but at this point I need to get this out as a draft so that it can start helping users while I iterate on it.  Here are some highlights of the new doc:

- It is updated to include the new Wi-Fi modes, and documents the vari...

April update Demo!

Here's a quick video focused on some of the features and things added for the April update around Overlays.  We also have some more performance improvements, stability fixes, and bug fixes this month.  We've added some additional artwork for the overlays, and next month we'll work to continue this pace.  I'll have the full 'whats new' for the may first update, but for now please enjoy this video walk through of some of the new features!  

Note: I'm trying a new 'AI'...

Dev update for April

I haven't really posted much here, but the teams been busy toiling away, so thought I'd give a quick update.

The new dev approach we've set is in motion. If you have issues filed at: Geektoolkit/DynaframeProIssues you've probably seen some activity there as we go through and pick what we can fix safely in April.  We also maintain an inernal bug database that we're picking through, and tons of...

Movie Poster Sync (kodi/plex) Feature Inquiry

Hello Patreons!  I'm happy to say that develpment in April is progressing much smoother than we've had in the past.  We're focusing on bug fixes this month, and what we call 'quality of life' issues which are things to make the user experience smoother and the system more stable.  

When we do get into features, one that we have an enormous amount of requests for has been to have movie posters 'sync' with systems such as Kodi or Plex.  The challenge here is we're not...

April Release! New Patreons please start here

• Welcome, this is the April release mail.  For those here from March, this is a re-release from March with the blocking bugs we found fixed and some networking re-work.  We fixed the following blocking bugs from that release:
  1) Video Freezing
  2) Network/DNS issues
  3) Overlay text settings not appearing
  
  What we still need to patch (Planned for May release):
• There are audio oddities with videos and the audio settings. We're investigating this. Sometimes ...
  2023-04-01 18:07:03 +0000 UTC View Post

Mid March Dev Update!

Quick Mid march update:

The team is heads down debugging issues with the March Beta, taking feedback, and working through things. The video hang issue we feel is resolved, and I want to thank those that contributed data which helped us narrow this down!  This includes:

Andrew Crider, Daren Westman, Norbert Weber and Matt Landon, and Jan Borghoff  

The team was able to correlate the info provided to eliminate many of the possabilities that could'v...

Need help (Updated- got it thankyou!)

Update:  Thankyou for the quick replies! We were able to track this one down and get it resolved.  We have one more issue with the adhoc networking which we're working through now and then we'll re-release the beta, let everyone try that out and ensure we didn't introduce new issues/fixed the bugs, and then we'll work to promote that to release.  Thankyou to everyone for helping us get this figured out, for reporting it, for being so patient with us as we work through this, and...

Important: March release is demoted to beta. Re-relase of December

Seems like the team bit off more than we could chew with the amount of change in the March release.  We've had numerous reports of issues with networking and a bad hang when playing videos that we need to investigate and fix.  That being siad, March has alot of goodnees (sync, unicode, file ordering, overlays) that some need.  So what we're going to do is this:

March release is now considered a beta.  Given the issues mentioned, if you want to still try it we'll lea...

Video showing March Release

The major change for March was the 'first run' page and being able to setup the frame wirelessly.  We also brought back Frame Sync, and Overlays (which will be patched shortly...we had some regressions at the end there).  

This video goes over everything so those that prefer videos can see a walk through of the UI and the flow.

The next two weeks I'll be focusing on bugfixes and patches and then we'll switch back to features. You'll be able to update via the 'store' pa...

March Release is here! (UPDATED PLEASE READ NOW BETA))

UPDATE / Important!
 This release is now BETA. IT has the following known issues:

- Wifi ssids with spaces in the name do not work

- playlists which have videos in them may hang
- Networking issues which may prevent other software to be downladed (such as apt-get)

We're working on the isssue (please see the march 3 post for details). I'm leaving this here for those that are ok with a beta release and willing to work around bugs or want the lates...

Notes about picture frame designs

Some tips and such for those designing frames:

1) Please make sure that at least one USB port and the SD card port are accessible.  The recovery of a Dynaframe can require that you have to remake an SD card if something goes catastrophically wrong.  There are SD card extenders available on amazon and other places to help if you are trying to make the SD card port more accessible.

2) Please make sure that at least one USB port is accessible.  This is handy if you h...

Beta release via discord, and we're on track for final this month

So great news, we have hit Beta for the next release, and will be releasing a full image and 'release' quality image this month.  We have two bugs currently int he Beta we're working on fixing:

1) A keyboard is currently required to get through the 'first run'.  We have a fix figured out for that, and I'll be working tomorrow night to get that in.

2) Ad hoc networks aren't resolving on all cell phones.   - This means that when you first start the frame, the ad...

Frame Sync is coming back!

Ashamedly, frame sync has been broken for far too long.  It's time to bring it back, and make it better than ever!  

Frame sync had a few issues when I first implemented it that were a bit frustrating. One was that it was clock based...which when the clocks were synced was amazing...but if they were out of sync even the slightest it'd throw the whole system off.  Raspberry pis tend to have a time drift of a few seconds over a few days which reallly broke sync.

Ano...

Dev update - February Mid Month

Quick Dev update on what's next...

Pushing towards Release

Right now almost our entire focus is on getting bugs squashed and pushing towards a full release this month.  We're taking feedback from the Alpha, and fixing bugs left and right as they come in.  Setting time from the config page was fixed tonight, as was the Shuffle behavior that was broken.  We have a bunch of layout fixes for Landscape vs. Portrait for the config page, and smaller tweaks...

New Alpha released!

Note: If you're new to Dynaframe, we release three types of updates...alphas, betas, and official.  Alphas and betas are updates which require enrolling in the Alpha program via Discord (this is mainly so we can seperate feedback of alphas vs. releases). Official releases are done once we've promoted the build based on functionality and stability.  We work hard to make official releases stable, so they may only come out every few months between the work we do.

The latest Alph...

Welcome February Patreons! Current update

If you're new to the patreon, welcome!  If you saw the project on Youtube you'll be pleasantly surprised at how many features have been added since then, and a bunch more are coming soon.   You should have a welcome mail with all of the info you need to get started.

The next update is being worked on...we ususally try to release an update at the end of the month however we're having some issues with the latest one which is a rewrite of the entire way we handle networking...

Updates, Fixes and Features for the next Alpha

We're working through some last issues before the next alpha release, which will be a 'code' release to the store.  The plan for February is bugfixing, implementing feedback, and getting it to a final release. That being said, we've had feedback coming in constantly, and we've had some bugs we've chosen to squash while we're deep in the Exif code.  Below are some highlights of what's in.....

Unicode support for the web page

This has been pointed out prev...

Quick note about feedback, bugs, etc.

I got some feedback recently that inspired this update, which is a bit about how the team works.

The main thing I want to say is that if you have a bug that is destroying your use of Dynaframe, Please (seriously..please...) let me know.  You can message me on here, on the discord, you can directly message me, or email me at joe@geek-toolkit.com.  If you want to just know the status of a bug or an issue, let me know.  I'm always glad to discuss, and sometimes things slip t...

Coming soon: Playlist Sorting!

As we get closer to the end of the month, and the team goes heads down to finishing up what we have in the hopper, I want to start to do some discussions of the progress we have and some features that are sliding in as we work through things.

Playlist 'order' has been a pain point for a while.  It turns out the default order on Linux is 'file system' order which is...however the files go into memory most efficiently (for those that code, it appears it may be a binary tree algo or s...

Progress Update - First run, offline mode, and Automations

I have some exciting progress to report!   Three areas, though offline and first run tie together well. And then a bit about the upcoming Automations UI that will be introduced, as well as a bit of where we're heading in February.

First Run

In software, the 'first run experience', or 'out of box experience' is usually the first thing a user sees when they start the software.  The settings UI you see above will be on the frame itself, and will be us...

January alpha release is ready! Welcome to Overlays

Happy New Years eve!  

We have an alpha quality release introducing the newest feature for Dynaframe...Overlays!  You can find the code in the discord in the Alpha-open channel.  We handle alpha releases there so that people have a place to place feedback that doesn't conflict with the released program feedback.  Also it gives us a place that is less confusing to communicate things like what will change from that to release.

The help section of the web UI has...

Spec Preview for Major neworking changes to Dynaframe

TLDR; Dynaframes networking is taking a major change which will require devices to have a keyboard hooked up when first setting them up (unless they're plugged into a network jack). If this is horrible or going to break your scenarios please provide feedback int he comments.  But also, let me please explain why....

The team holds a high bar for the software and what we want it to achieve. The problem is that the top issue is wifi connectivity.  Other countries are on differen...

December Progress - Overlay Demo!

The above pictures are previews of the upcoming Overlay Support.  There is a lot a picture can't tell you, but I'll work to explain that over the next few days now that we're moving into a 'fit and finish' portion of development on it.  This is the last major engine rewrite for a while, so the next few months we will be focusing on documentation, bugfixes, and features such as the 'offline user' one and some automation items on the backlog.  

This feature should close ou...

December Mid Month update!

Quick progress for the mid month of December!

Right now I'm deep in overlay engine work.  The holidays and family in town has slowed things down a bit, but the end of the month is a wide open window for me to make some solid progress here. My current goal is to release it as alpha, and we'll work to finalize it in January as we make that an automation focused month. I have some great surprises for January planned and am very excited to get some long awaited features in there. 2022-12-18 07:33:24 +0000 UTC View Post

Feature proposal - Temporary offline mode

Hey there! So as we get more and more feedback on how the system works, I'd like to propose some features to get initial feedback before we run off and code them to try to dial in how to best deliver an experience that solves some of the pains and gaps that have  been expressed recently.

Here are some of the (currently broken) scenarios we'd like to deliver:
1) A technical user would like to put the frame at a relatives house who isn't technical, and have it just show pictures....

December Release is here!

I'll put the 'whats new' at the bottom so that the data most of you need is at the top.

Upgrade Code (for those on prior releases), you can use the store to upgrade in place:

piDecDFP1-61387c6

Full Images (If you're unsure, please use the windows zip version)

Latest (December)Release - Windows Zip version- https://d...