2014-06-11

The Falcon Pi Player v0.3.0 (FPP-Beta-0.3.0-Noobs.zip) is now officially available

for download via SourceForge.net. Many thanks go out to all of those who helped

us test by downloading the beta-test SD images and taking things for a spin to make

sure we bolted all the wheels on tight before everyone else got on the bus.

The new v0.3.0 image is available for download directly at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/falc...s.zip/download or by selecting the v0.3.0 image from the Falcon Pi Player download

area at http://sourceforge.net/projects/falc...urce=directory

If you're in a hurry to try it out without reading the release novel (err, notes), please scroll down and read the Known Issues and Notes sections at the bottom of this announcement before proceeding.

Changes in v0.3.0 include:

* Additional channel output drivers to add support for the following:

- USB DMX Pro

- This has been tested with the Entec Pro and should be compatible

with the DLA Lynx USB dongle w/ DMX firmware, DIYC RPM, DMXking.com,

DIYblinky.com, and any other DMX Pro compatible dongles.

- USB DMX Open

- This has been tested with Entec & generic FTDI USB to RS485

adapters and should be compatible with LOR and D-Light DMX

dongles and any other DMX Open compatible dongles.

- USB Pixelnet Lynx

- This supports the DLA Lynx USB dongle w/ Pixelnet firmware

- USB Pixelnet Open

- This supports the Pixelnet protocol using generic FTDI USB

to RS485 adapters

- Renard via USB serial dongles

- One strang of WS2801 pixels connected directly to the SPI port

on the Pi.

* Additional Media Outputs

- MP3 audio - MP3 support has made a comeback after going on hiatus

for the v0.2.0 release.

- MP4/MKV video - MP4 and MKV files containing H.264 video may be

played along with a sequence instead of a music file. The video

file will be played in sync with the sequence.

* Channel Remapping

- Ability to remap single channels or blocks of channels onto another

area of the channel data to work around faulty hardware or display

items which have been moved. Prevents having to regenerate all

sequences in an emergency situation.

* Plugin support

- Allows 3rd-party plugins to be seamlessly downloaded and

integrated into FPP, including custom menu items.

* TagLib parsing of media file meta-data

- MP3 ID3 and OGG comments are now parsed to alloe meta-data to be

passed to RDS-capable and other plugins.

* Additional allowable event script types

- Perl (.pl), PHP (.php), and Python (.py) scripts can now be

uploaded and used as event scripts.

* Logging optimizations and configurability

- Log Mask allows turning logging for different functions of FPP on

and off independently from each other.

- Log Level controls whether errors, warnings, or debug information

is logged.

- Log Mask and Level on the fly without restarting

* File Manager enhancements

- Download buttons have been added to the File Manager to allow

downloading previously uploaded files.

- Scripts may be viewed without downloading, similar to the log

viewer.

* Effect sequence (*.eseq) files are now parsed correctly, rather

than being treated as renamed .fseq files. These can be created

by xLights/Nutcracker and contain a single model's effect(s)

including the correct start channel information.

* Memory mapped channel data overlay

- The Memory Mapped Channel Block feature allows blocks of channels

to be defined and then external data can be overlayed onto those

blocks during a running sequence or when no sequence is running.

This will allow for things such as dynamic text to be overlayed

on a matrix or pixel tree while a sequence is running.

Currently the script doing the overlaying needs to understand

how the strings wrap and are folded on the display, but FPP is

being modified to bring that configuration into the core so

the data supplier does not have understand the physical layout.

- A sample script to scroll text across a matrix will be supplied

and a UI plugin is being developed and will be released soon

after the official v0.3.0 release.

* Command-line channel test mode (with web UI to come)

- The backend code has been added to allow turning individual

channels on and off as well as setting the intensity of those

channels. This is currently available only via the command-

line, but a web interface will be developed to allow testing

via the UI

* Screen blanking is now turned off by default, users can

enable/disable on FPP settings page

* Lot of bug fixes and some other things I forgot to mention.

Known Issues:

* Volume control on the VastFMT transmitter and other external USB sound cards is not

working properly, we are working on a solution.

* Volume control is not working properly when playing video. We have discovered that

omxplayer does not use ALSA, so it does not honor our mixer changes. We are

investigating on a solution for this.

* LCD output is currently reported broken. We are investigating this issue as well.

Notes:

* For users using the fall-back IP address of 192.168.0.10, this IP address will no longer

be configured if there is a valid eth0 IP address and gateway configured via DHCP or

statically in the UI. If no valid IP and gateway are detected, the fallback IP will still be

configured.

* For those that helped test v0.3.0 by using the Beta SD images previously released. You

will want download and install the official v0.3.0 image because it includes several minor

changes and it also tracks the official v0.3.0 code branch. The beta images previously

released track the stage branch of code which is where we integrate and test code from

other branches so stage is not guaranteed to be working all the time. If you want to

continue to help test, we will probably release a 'stage' image for tracking the stage

branch to help regression test new features before they are pushed out to v0.3.0.

Show more