Topic: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.7.15

To run the Control Panel Beta on your chumby, select it from the popup menu on the website on this page and reboot your chumby.  To return to the release Control Panel, just reselect "Control Panel" (without the "Beta") and reboot your chumby.

if you are running a previous beta, simply reboot your chumby.  Please review previous release notes if this is your first beta.

Control Panel 2.7 requires firmware version 1.6 or later to support many of its new features.

Release Notes:

Version: 2.7.15
Release Date: 7/30/08

Summary: Adds support for backup alarm subsystem, replaces custom alarm configuration with wizard, refactors clock and alarm screens, add wifi indicator, adds NOAA audio source, fixes many bugs.

Main Screen:

* Adds wifi signal strength display

Settings/Volume:

* Volume and Balance sliders are now "live" - settings change as the sliders are moved

Settings/Chumby Info:

* Adds encryption and auth type
* Adds wifi statistics - signal strength, link quality, noise level

Music:

* Adds "NOAA Radio by Wundergound" music source
* Volume and Balance sliders are now "live"
* Fixes bugs in MediaFly that would result in empty podcast list
* Fixes various bugs across the music subsystem

Clock:

* Moves clock settings to Settings to make room for more future options for both clocks and alarms

Alarms:

In order to increase the reliability of the alarm subsystem, a new low level "backup" alarm system has been added to the chumby firmware as of version 1.6.  This alarm subsystem operates outside of the Control Panel and Flash Player, and is insensitive to problems with widgets, music playback, the quality of the network, etc.  This Control Panel adds the necessary UI support to allow the configuration of this backup alarm.  Because the current UI became unwieldy with all of the available options and their possible interactions, we have replaced the old configuration system with a configuration wizard.

Because the backup alarm operates at such a low level, it hijacks the display and audio subsystem from the Control Panel, therefore the Control Panel is shut down during the alarm and restarted when the backup alarm is complete.  The backup alarm operates at full volume, with mute off, the screen at full brightness, and through both the internal speakers and audio output jack.

* Adds mandatory backup alarm to "quick alarms" - delay is 5 minutes after primary alarm
* Adds optional backup alarm to "custom alarms"
* Adds ability to name alarms - default is the computed name based on the settings
* Adds the display of the alarm name to the ring dismissal screen
* Adds "NOAA Radio" to alarm audio sources
* Adds ability to enable/disable custom alarms directly from the alarm listing
* Fixes bug with occasional failure of entering Night Mode as an alarm action

Widget Player:

* Fixed bug with "forever" widgets - widgets marked as "forever" by the author will now honor user timing, then convert to "forever" when interacted with.
* Added accelerometer-based next/prev - press and hold the squeeze switch and tilt the chumby left and right past 45 degrees to switch widgets.  Pressing and releasing the switch without tilting will behave as before
* Many, many small bug fixes

Easter Eggs (not officially supported):

Control Panel Hotspot: While playing widgets, old Control Panels had a small invisible button in the upper left that would allow the user to enter the Control Panel without hitting the squeeze switch.  It was removed because it potentially blocked UI elements in widgets from using that part of the screen.  However, some people got used to it, so it's been restored as a hack.

To enable the hotspot, create a file "/psp/hostpot" with the coordinates of where you want the button, for instance, "0,0" will be in the upper left.  To remove the hotspot, simply delete the file. Changes will take effect when the Control Panel is restarted.

A simple procedure to enable the hotspot:

1) SSH into the chumby per the instructions on the chumby wiki
2) perform the commands:

echo 0,0 > /psp/hotspot
stop_control_panel
start_control_panel

Clock Overlay: Some people have asked for a continuous clock on the display while playing widgets - the Control Panel now includes a MM/DD/YY HH:MM:SS AM/PM clock that can be overlayed on the display at 50% opacity.  The clock does not process touchscreen events - they are passed through to the underlying widget. To enable the clock, create the file "/psp/clockoverlay" with the coordinates of where the clock should appear, for instance, "0,0" will be the upper left.  You can optionally include a width and height - "0,0,320,240" will fill the screen.  The default size is 208x27.  To remove the overlay, delete the file.  Changes will take effect when the Control Panel is restarted.

A simple procedure to enable the clock overlay in the lower left corner:

1) SSH into the chumby per the instructions on the chumby wiki
2) perform the commands:

echo 0,213 > /psp/clockoverlay
stop_control_panel
start_control_panel

External Events: Some people have requested the ability to have the Control Panel perform actions on behalf of external programs.  To assist with this, the Control Panel now accepts externally generated events for many common and useful actions.

To perform an action, a small fragment of XML is placed in the file "/tmp/flashplayer.event", and the Flash Player is signaled with the command "chumbyflashplayer.x -F1".

Supported events:

<event type="UserPlayer" value="play" comment="http://path.to.stream"/> // play the URL
<event type="NightMode" value="on" comment=""/> // enter night mode
<event type="NightMode" value="off comment=""/> // exit night mode
<event type="WidgetPlayer" value="nextWidget" comment=""/> // switch to the next widget
<event type="WidgetPlayer" value="prevWidget" comment=""/> // switch to the previous widget
<event type="WidgetPlayer" value="reload" comment=""/> // reload the current channel
<event type="WidgetPlayer" value="setChannel" comment="Default"/> // switch to the named channel
<event type="WidgetPlayer" value="setWidget" comment="Surfline Surf Report" /> // name of widget instance, fall back to widget name, skipped if widget not present
<event type="MusicPlayer" value="stop" comment=""/> // stop the current music
<event type="MusicPlayer" value="setVolume" comment="100"/> // set the system volume, 0..100
<event type="MusicPlayer" value="setMute" comment="on"/> // // set the system mute, "on" = muted, "off" = no muted
<event type="MusicPlayer" value="setBalance" comment="0"/> // set the system balance, -100..100
<event type="AlarmPlayer" value="on" comment="1"/> // enable alarm by index
<event type="AlarmPlayer" value="off" comment="1"/> // disable alarm by index
<event type="AlarmPlayer" value="ring" comment="1"/> // ring alarm by index
<event type="AlarmPlayer" value="snooze" comment=""/> // snooze the currently ringing alarm
<event type="AlarmPlayer" value="stop" comment=""/> // stop the currently ringing alarm