It seems useful to write a bit about what’s currently being worked on and the plans for the future. So here we go:
Next OS release
The next OS release is almost ready. A bit more testing is still required though. Just today the testing version of the OS has been updated. So if you have a spare development device lying around, you can give that a try by using the Manage button on the device’s detail page and selecting the Activate testing channel... menu. It’s recommended to only use the testing version on devices you can easily reach as it is, as indicated by the name, still in testing. So things might break. Among the new features:
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When downloading content, the progress bar is now better at showing the progress. Similarly you will now see a progress bar within the device list and device detail page while a download is in progress.
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When using P2P to accelerate content download to devices within the same network, an optimization will now try to minimize duplicate downloads of the same content.
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Content prefetching will soon allow a device using the setup scheduling feature to download content before it will be assigned. That way larger video files will already be on the device once they get switched to.
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An experimental Diskless mode. This allows you to run a Pi4, CM4 or Pi400 without any SD card or other local storage completely out of RAM. The complete OS and all assigned content is retrieved over the internet via Ethernet every time the Pi restarts. The downside is the larger bandwidth requirement and less flexible configuration abilities. The upside is the basically unbreakable installation as you never have to fear a corrupted SD card.
Together with the P2P feature, which is mandatory for this mode, some downloads might actually be avoided as other local devices already have the assigned content locally available and can supply it to a booting device over the local network.
If you’re interested in trying out this mode, please get in contact.
Dashboard updates
Numerous new releases have been rolled out in the last months. Among the features added:
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A device troubleshooter: If a device is offline, its device page will now allow you to click through a troubleshooter wizard that might help getting the device back online. It will ask some questions and present the most likely reason for a device being offline.
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The playlist feature got more filters and conditions to be even more flexible in creating dynamic playlists based on asset searches or more. Right now the discoverability of all those features and what you can actually do with them isn’t presented in an easily accessible way. It might be worth offering some kind of video call workshop for that. If you’re interested in that, please get in contact.
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Various new setup configuration options not yet used by any of the publicly available packages. This will change in the future once the “player next gen” pages gets a rework. See next section.
Packages
Right now some aspect of the playlist feature is mostly unused: The individual scheduling of assets. There still isn’t a stable package that fully uses this ability (you can test it using the HD Image/Video Player Next Gen package if you want to try it out). It’s now the top priority to partially rework this package and make it the new default. It should combine the best features from the simply HD player and Scheduled player and make it easy to create complex schedule and layouts, if needed. The balance between making the package as capable as possible when needed while simultaneously making it simple to configure if you just need a simple playlist turned out to be more complex than expected and development took longer than planned. Stay tuned.