V3.24 Release - 2D/3D previews, more controls, backup + restore tool, low power options, and more!

News and Announcements
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This is a big one! Compared to V3.20, here’s what’s changed:

Features

  • Added live 2d and 3d previews. A new preview pane is visible on the Editor tab.
    Screen Shot 2022-03-19 at 3.28.31 PM

  • Preview pixels up to 1000, 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.

    Screen Shot 2022-03-19 at 3.29.28 PM
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  • The mapper preview can now be manually controlled/rotated in 3D mode. Double click to return to auto rotate.

  • The CPU frequency is configurable for 80/160/240. Takes effect on next startup. This can save 30mA or so between 240MHz and 80MHz.

  • You can disable WiFi on startup. The status LED is also further dimmed. This drops power significantly! Hold the button as if you were going to setup mode, and it will resume the last WiFi mode.

  • The pixel mapper has a setting to maintain aspect ratio:

Usability

  • 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.

Utilities

  • 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.

    Screen Shot 2022-03-19 at 3.32.38 PM
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  • Hostname based on name (might show up in your dhcp or router logs)

  • Added peer discovery API (not yet used in UI). {"getPeers": true}

  • File list API “/list” shows all files (some might not be discoverable otherwise)

  • Wifi signal strength is show in the scan as a number too.

Fixes

  • Update the color picker widget, should fix some small bugs.
  • Fix bug that wouldn’t let you clear out a pixel map
  • Fixed a websocket reconnect issue, improved this overall.
  • Fix implicit globals, no longer causing issues with functions.
  • Better dark mode support.
  • Webserver reliability fix. Should see much fewer connection reset issues.
  • Changes to config write two copies and only overwrite the second file if the first is successful. This should prevent any kind of wifi/power issues from losing your working config. A revision counter keeps track of modifications so that it loads the newest valid config if they don’t match.
  • 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. No more lost/corrupt patterns.

Files for offline install:

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Backup & Restore, yes! I’m assuming that a backup from one PB can be restored to a different PB?

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I tried this yesterday, to clone the settings/patterns from one PB to another. Works great!

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Yep. It will copy all of the settings as well including name, so that might make it a little more confusing on the discovery page, but the IP address won’t likely change. WiFi settings like the network and passphrase don’t change.

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Holy cow. I FINALLY got to play with this release today… and OMG.

There’s so much incredible stuff in this release! Thank you SO much for all this work. I see so much stuff we’ve requested across the last year (like 2D/3D previews, output UI, and trigger/toggle UI controls !!) and stuff that will really save people time (like corrupt pattern mitigation).

Needs to be said: This is probably the most monumental release I’ve seen in the last 2 years I’ve been addicted to Pixelblaze.

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Okay I gotta give this a whirl!

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I’m thrilled! I was just yesterday whinging about needing to work with sliders when what I really need is to enter numbers. I’m lighting houses and need to place lights at certain points for architectural features. Now instead of coding individually for houses I can build a pattern that lets me put lights where I want them. Yippee!

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This is really great stuff! Especially the new mapping visualizations.

There was talk last year of implementing an ability to access the mapping outside render2d / render3d so that we could precompute large frames. Did that get implemented somewhere? I am pushing 1500 pixels on a pretty complex map, so would love to have access to that mapping code.

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Not yet, thanks for reminding me!

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I found the “backup and restore” feature this evening by accident while setting up 3 PixelBlazes with very similar settings, at once, for an event next weekend and it made me overjoyed and saved me a lot of time and frustration. Thank you.

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I was about to ask for the ability to not have my mappings scaled to the unit square / cube and here it is already! Thank you thank you thank you!

1 Like