Topic: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

To run the Control Panel Beta on your chumby, select it from the popup menu on the website on the "My Chumby" page - it's in the lower right - and reboot your chumby.  To return to the release Control Panel, just reselect "Control Panel" (without the "Beta") and reboot your chumby.

If you decide to revert back to the release Control Panel, you may need to "restore to factory defaults" in Safe Mode if you've made changes to the first alarm in the Alarms screen, since it's interpreted by the older Control Panel as alarm2.

Release Notes:

Version: 2.6.48
Release Date: 12/3/07

Summary: Greatly expands the Music functionality to include a wider selection of music and audio sources, most notably SHOUTcast, Mediafly, SlimServer, and local files.  Also expands the Alarm functionality to allow an arbitrary number of alarms, with more options.  The Channels functionality has also been refactored to be clearer and less ambiguous.  There are very likely bugs in the alarm subsystem in particular - do not expect this Control Panel to wake you up.

Music:

* adds new Music screen to select continuous music/audio sources
* adds SHOUTcast music selection screen
* adds Mediafly podcast selection screen
* adds Radio Free Chumby selection screen
* adds SlimServer screen
* adds "Music from USB" screen
* replaces iPod screen with new artwork

Alarms:

* removes Alarm 2
* adds Alarms screen to manage multiple alarms
* adds alarm volume control
* adds more granularity to alarm days - one time, weekends, weekdays, each day of the week in addition to daily
* adds duration to the alarm
* adds ability to change channel when alarm is dismissed
* adds ability to suppress the alarm ring screen

Channels:

* adds new interstitial screen to explicitly select the channel operation - reload, change channels, get info, accept/decline

Settings/Volume

* adds checkbox to enable the screen touchclick

Night Mode

* increases the size of the text, removes the AM/PM indicator
* adds information about the next scheduled alarm

Missing functionality

* use of continuous music sources as alarms
* other post-alarm actions such as Night mode

Known bugs:

* Some audio sources may not actually play - in many cases this is due to the behavior of the upstream source, but there may be other reasons - incompatible formats, etc.
* The alarms will sometimes fail to properly handle night mode
* The alarms will sometime leave a "ghost" image of the ring dialog.
* The iPod functionality is limited to less than about 4,000 tracks - a fully loaded 80GB iPod will crash the system
* some iPod functionality clunky, especially when switching playlists

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

Thanks Duane.

I have been waiting all day for this. (I am on the East Coast)

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

3 (edited by corris 2007-12-03 16:17:53)

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

Wow!  awesome!

works like a charm so far.

I got my chumby friday, mainly as a "modern" alarm clock, and was disappointed in the alarm features ( manually setting each day, limit of two, sounds ).    I only had to have the lame beep alarm once, this morning, and now this!

I'm thrilled to see the new release focused a lot of energy on the alarm system.  The flexible alarms are great!  now I can have an alarm for me, and an alarm for my wife, and all I have to do is shut mine off, I don't have to worry about setting hers.  looking forward to having the alarm "turn on" a streamed source.  oh, and the post-alarm switch channels, brilliant!

Love the slim server screen!  thanks!

I'm kinda bummed about the channel selection process, and this update made it worse.  In my opinion, it takes too many "clicks" to change the channel.  it took too many in the last version, and this release takes even more.  sad  unfortunately, I can't think of an alternative, except maybe echo what I've read on the forums, "hold top button down for 2 seconds" or something... or, maybe, if it's on the control panel screen, another press would simply cycle through the channels ( because as it stands now, when on the control panel screen, the top button doesn't do anything ). 

The new Night Mode screen is great too!  ( except one bummer part, and this has nothing todo with this release, I wish the black were more, well, black ).

Thanks again,  I'm proud to own a chumby!

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

I'm glad you made the improvements, once this release is out I think you're ready for mainstream.   The focus on alarms and music makes the device seem much more useful.  Now I can put the Chumby somewhere and use it as a radio without it being incredibly difficult.

How often will the beta screen get updated?

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

There's no particular schedule at the moment - it may get updated more than once a day, or not get updated for a couple of days, depending upon what's going on.  Effectively, you're getting access to something roughly equivalent to a "nightly build" on a SourceForge project - things may break that worked before, new things may be added, things may look different, version numbers may skip, but the overall progress is intended to be "forward".

This set of releases comes with no guarantees of any kind.

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

Very cool. The expanded Music is very nice.

First off though I have to say that the new 'Channel' page is a step in the wrong direction. That link should go to a page listing all your channels with those four buttons on it. The interstitial page has to go.

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

Hmmm, we got the opposite complaints when the buttons were all on the same page as the channel listing.

Kinda puts us in a tough place.

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

The expanded music is great!  Could I take it one step further? 

I run my own Icecast streaming station, and have the Chumby playing from it using btplay and a cgi script so I can start it playing over the web.  If there were a way to input a specific Shoutcast/Icecast station URL via the flash interface (like you have with an IP address of a SlimServer), that'd be wonderful.  Or maybe I'm missing where I can do that with the current beta?

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

Yes, I'll be adding that in an upcoming beta release - just wanted to get something out there for you folks to play with while I put in some more stuff.

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

ssooo, how about a quick way to cycle through the channels?

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

Thank you very kindly for releasing this so soon. This was one of the primary things I wanted to be able to do with the Chumby!

Also, here is an idea to consider on future control panel releases. Release different control panels with different functionality in each. Or even a control panel wizard that would let you configure behaviors that best fit your Chumby usage.

King Nacho

T.C.A.R.

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

I have to second (or third, whatever) the new channel change format. That's a LOT of clicks just to change channels, don't you think? I'd much prefer the earlier channel change screen...it had the same info, but on one page. This just adds an unnecessary extra screen that does nothing. Really...a screen for 4 buttons?

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

Oh, but otherwise, new beta is VERY cool! LOL. Don't get me wrong...I appreciate all the hard work. You guys are doing a great job.

14 (edited by gsr264 2007-12-03 22:43:22)

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

Agreed on the Channel changing going backwards. What was the reasoning for the extra screen?

What if (from the main control panel) you have arrows to the left & right of the Chumby pic (that displays your current widget) to change widgets and arrows above & below for channels?

Then you can still have the channel button in the corner to get tom the other channel related options.

sound possible?

Otherwise love the beta.

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

kkennedy wrote:

Really...a screen for 4 buttons?

4 buttons *now*...but....

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

I haven't tried the beta yet, I will get to it soon. I strongly suggest though that keyboard support is brought to the plate. That or a usb interface support. That way users could create their own array of buttons to place on the chumby however they like and add functions to them such as forward and backward. The music integration seems very good, I should try it with some of my other devices. I have a few "3rd party" mp3 players, namely a zen which I can only cross my fingers it detects. Well keep up the good deving! viva chumby

17 (edited by skada 2007-12-04 08:35:45)

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

Yeah, I don't get the intermediate channel changing page either. Who requested it to be like this? Did you perhaps misunderstand the requests?

EDIT: forgot to give you props. Overall, the update is a great step in the right direction. Nice work!

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

Neither "reload" nor "accept/decline" require a list of channels, so it was unclear why the list was there for those functions.  There was also a lot of misinterpretation of the functions when changing channels - what button should you press when you *didn't* want to change channels, vs the one to press when you did?

Also we want to do *more* on the chumby with regard to channels and with the limited real estate it was not going to be possible.

We'll take a look and see if there's another solution that makes sense.

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

I've had good experience so far with the update. The music additions are nice.

I don't mind the extra interstitial for the channel change - keep the interface simple at each level.

the only difference that I'd like is that if I complete the process to change a channel, I'd like to go back to the initial control panel screen, not return to the change/reload/accept page.

thanks for the updates!

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

Looks good!

What I miss is an option to turn off the screen (and perhaps wifi) in nightmode.

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

Looking really good so far. My only request is that the alarm has an option to change channels when it starts up as well. For example, I'd like it to go into my "Weekday morning" channel when the alarm first goes off, which is simply the time and the weather. Then when I turn the alarm off, I can have it automatically go to my default channel. If you couple this with the ability of setting an alarm with no sound and no alarm screen, you can now have the chumby change channels at certain times as well. Two cool functions in one!

Thanks for the work you guys are putting into this, it is appreciated!

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

Duane wrote:
kkennedy wrote:

Really...a screen for 4 buttons?

4 buttons *now*...but....

Ah...noted. I guess I can give it a whirl, then! *grin* I'm liking the beta panel very much overall, though. New music functionality is great (a holiday channel would be awesome for Radio Free Chumby, if we can find a good one...I'm looking!), new alarms are the wiz, and I too like the new nighttime size/font. Thumbs up!

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

There are some holiday music channels on Shoutcast -- no idea if any are good.

You have the best possible holiday music channel already in Radio Free Chumby, though -- it's Jon Solomon's 24-hour alternative holiday music marathon on WPRB!  It's famous -- he's been doing it for over 20 years.  Starts 6PM (east coast time) on New Year's eve day (I think) and continues through Christmas Day.

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

Steve Tomlin wrote:

There are some holiday music channels on Shoutcast -- no idea if any are good.

You have the best possible holiday music channel already in Radio Free Chumby, though -- it's Jon Solomon's 24-hour alternative holiday music marathon on WPRB!  It's famous -- he's been doing it for over 20 years.  Starts 6PM (east coast time) on New Year's eve day (I think) and continues through Christmas Day.

wow!  so that would be, what, 358 days of holiday music???   :-)

Re: Release Notes - Control Panel 2.6.48

Steve Tomlin wrote:

There are some holiday music channels on Shoutcast -- no idea if any are good.

You have the best possible holiday music channel already in Radio Free Chumby, though -- it's Jon Solomon's 24-hour alternative holiday music marathon on WPRB!  It's famous -- he's been doing it for over 20 years.  Starts 6PM (east coast time) on New Year's eve day (I think) and continues through Christmas Day.

Well, I've been avoiding the Shoutcast streams, after seeing the mentions of the memory usage, and while I'm sure Jon's marathon is nice...my wife is "classic", rather than "alternative", in her holiday music appreciation. *grin*  Trust me, it's a pretty big demographic that likes the old-school holiday stuff!

No biggie. I was playing about in Shoutcast a bit last night, looking for something decent. It's all good!