V2.29 Release - Pattern compatibility with V3.24 and more

Hello!
This brings most of the features added in V3.24 like the new UI controls, and 2D/3D previews up to 256 pixels.

  • Added live 2d and 3d previews. A new preview pane is visible on the Editor tab.
  • Preview pixels up to 256, up from 100. If you have more it samples across the pixel set, skipping some in between instead of all at the end. Saved previews are downscaled to 100 pixels to conserve storage.
  • Added tons of more UI controls: toggle (switch), trigger (button), and inputNumber (text number input).
  • New output UI controls: showNumber and gauge. Gauge shows a number 0-1.0, showNumber can be anything.
  • The mapper preview can now be manually controlled/rotated in 3D mode. Double click to return to auto rotate.
  • The pixel mapper has a setting to maintain aspect ratio.
  • The spinning cube loading screen provides more detail on the status / progress.
  • Patterns are sorted case insensitively, numerically, and should be localized based on the browser.
  • Fixed step on sliders, so you can adjust with the keyboard in 0.5% steps.
  • Mapped pixels beyond the configured number of pixels show as gray.
  • Restructured the settings page with new layout / labels.
  • Added a small cross in the center of the 3D preview so you can tell where the center is.
  • Backup and Restore tools. This downloads an archive with all patterns and settings and can be restored later. This can be done right on the settings page.
  • File list API “/list” shows all files (some might not be discoverable otherwise)
  • Update the color picker widget, should fix some small bugs.
  • Fix implicit globals, no longer causing issues with functions.
  • Reworked how patterns get saved, should only overwrite/save if it gets there completely and passes some sanity checks. Save progress and success/failure shown in the UI. Avoids lost/corrupt patterns due to network / saving issues.

v2.29.stfu (781.2 KB)

7 Likes

Thank you, on behalf of my Pixelblaze v2s, which are still in daily use, reliably and happily doing their thing – some for several years now!

2 Likes

Same here – I know it’s presented some challenges, so thanks for keeping both platforms at the same level.

3 Likes

Thanks for helping test v2.29 @pixie , and your slick tools, hopefully this makes your backups easier! Btw the urlencoding issue is still on my list!

@zranger1 glad they are still blazing!

For doing backups, the version of PBBtool here makes uses of the ‘/list’ endpoint where it exists so it will work even better with v2.29; for downlevel versions it backups up all the files it can discover (it has a list of the known configuration filenames and the rest is the listable patterns).

I’ve added a few more things to it (Firestorm-like cloning of patterns – but not configs – from a backup to a Pixelblaze, and extracting individual patterns from a backup, and map-aware pattern previews) but they rely on some new features I’m adding to @zranger1’s pixelblaze-client library so I haven’t published it yet.

Coming soon…

1 Like

FYI, possible bug:

I’m running this release on my pixelblaze 2.7 and the websocket connection is sending tons of blank frames between it’s normal heartbeat messages.

Those are probably binary preview frames. You have to handle both text and binary frames. You can discard most of the binary frames, but some of them are needed like for listing patterns.

Wouldn’t the newer 3+ version of the pixelblaze have the same behavior then?

i have a bunch of v2s that are mostly on v2.16.
what would be your reccomendation for upgrading the firmware on all of them? I have no option in the web interace so i’m assuming i need to manually flash them. please advise.

thank you!!!

See this post: