3.1

New user installation instructions

For new users, you need to download the appropriate image from the links below. Then follow the instructions found at https://falconchristmas.com/forum/index.php/topic,9372.0.html to "burn" the image on to an SD card. Just extracting/copying the file to a blank SD card will NOT work.

New Features:

• BBB String capes can have their expansion ports set to either standard or differential. Differential expansions can now support Smart Receivers
• Many BBB Panel cape (Octoscroller/PocketScroller) improvements including:
  • Options for 9-12 bit color to provide much better image quality (at expense of refresh rate)
  • Option to allow output by row (more compatible, but more flicker) or by bit (less flicker)
  • Faster data output resulting in higher refresh

Enhancements:

• C++ plugins can wire file descriptors into the main select event loop
• C++ plugins can wire callbacks into the MultiSync process
• Implement an "open" command for MultiSync to allow remotes to start opening the files sooner
• BBB capes can have any number of DMX outputs from 1-8 instead of just 1, 4, or 8
• Setting to allow "script" PlayList entries to wait for the script to complete
• On multi-core Pi's, pass "-j 4" to make to allow it to build/upgrade faster
• Report the Pi/BBB serial number on about page
• Upgrade FPP proxy to use proxy_html to hopefully allow updating/fixing HTML returned from controllers
• Speed up setting the number of universes on e1.31 input and output pages.

Bug fixes:

• LOGDIR is exported to plugins so debug logs will not appear in /
• FPD dongle detection and data not working
• Move FPD/PiFace setup to later in boot to allow SPI to have more time to startup
• Yellow/Blue OLEDs with multiple networks configured would drop to only one network line
• fpp -g and -G commands now accept the older "comma separated" list for compatibility
• PixelOverlay models not working properly unless they are "Top left/Horizontal"
• Changing tether selection from OLED should prompt for reboot to activate
• Don't trigger a wifi scan while trying to associate. Seems to cause kernel/driver issues on Kernel 4.19
• Enable CORS headers in /api to allow API's to be called from other locations
• Fix clone/delete of universes not moving descriptions
• Fix build of USB/DMX outputs

Upgrade Instructions:

The best way to upgrade from FPP 2.x is to re-image the device. The full OS upgrade to Debian Buster requires a re-image.

If you have a system running 3.0, you can go to the FPP about page (about.php) and click on the "Manual Update" button. At that point, a big green "Upgrade" bar should appear. It will take a long time to upgrade. Likely 20-30 minutes. You will need to reboot after the upgrade is complete to finish the upgrade process.

3.0

New user installation instructions

For new users, you need to download the appropriate image from the links below. Then follow the instructions found at https://falconchristmas.com/forum/index.php/topic,9372.0.html to "burn" the image on to an SD card. Just extracting/copying the file to a blank SD card will NOT work.

New Features:

• Support for Raspberry Pi 4 (*)
• Updated images to Debian 10 Buster (*)
• Support for 1.5" SSD1327 OLED screens
• Ability to "proxy" controllers behind FPP
• Add support for .mov, .wav, .mpg
• Ability to write plugins in C++ (experimental)
• BBB - Smart Receiver support for BBB cape differential outputs
• BBB - Add ability to turn off/control the various BBB leds
• Support for higher bitrate audio
• Docker images on DockerHub

Enhancements:

• Updated to support up to 8M channels (from 1M)
• Conversion of some boot stuff to C++ to boot faster
• BBB - Also look on I2C1 for OLED/temperature sensors
• Upgrade to latest jquery version
• Pi - don't show FPD page unless FPD detected
• Default volume to 70% to avoid overdriving SoundBlaster and other cards
• Pi - CPU temperature displayed with other sensor information
• New internal architecture to only load outputs that are actually configured/used. Reduces memory usage.

Bug fixes:

• Bunch of fixes to get omxplayer video output to not leak memory and cause crashes/lockups
• Setting UI Password now doesn't break everything

Upgrade Instructions:

The best way to upgrade is to re-image the device. The full OS upgrade to Debian Buster requires a re-image.

If you have a system running 2.7.2, you can go to the FPP about page (about.php) and click on the "Manual Update" button. At that point, a big green "Upgrade" bar should appear. It will take a long time to upgrade. Likely 20-30 minutes. You will get all the improvements above except those marked with the "requires re-imaging" notes on the release notes. However, this does NOT upgrade the underlying OS to "Debian Buster". At this point, we do not know how many more releases we will continue to support building on "Debian Stretch".

2.7.2

Updates:

• Update cape detection on Raspberry Pi to account for the Pi booting too fast so EEPROMs are not yet available.
• Check i2c1 for OLED's on BBB in addition to normal i2c2
• Allow script installer to check for max versions in addition to just min version (so obsolete scripts can not be shown)
• Slightly faster boot on BBB (uboot bootdelay setting reduced) (requires re-imaging)
• Faster Raspberry Pi OLED (increase i2c bus speed to 400khz from 100khz) (requires re-imaging)

Bug Fixes:

• On WHITE OLED displays, vendor logos were being cut off by one pixel
• BBB GPIO PWM output causing crash due to latest BBB kernel changes
• Problem with Front/Back setting on LED Panel page mixing up panels and wiring
• Prevent saving playlists with no name
• Don't show options on LED Panel page that are not applicable to installed cape

Upgrade Instructions:

If you have a system running 2.7, you can go to the FPP about page (about.php) and click on the "Manual Update" button. It should only take a few minutes to upgrade.

If you have a system running 2.4-2.6, you can go to the FPP about page (about.php) and click on the "Manual Update" button. At that point, a big green "Upgrade" bar should appear. You will get all the improvements above except those marked with the "requires re-imaging" notes on the release note for all the versions is upgrading through. Note: there are a LOT of changes in this release. The "Upgrade" button will take several minutes. BeagleBones should take about 15 minutes. Newer Pi 3's are about 10 minutes. Single core Pi's may take over 30 minutes.

2.7.1

Updates:

• Detect the new Raspberry Pi 3A+ and provide a logo for it
• Detect "Unknown" capes as "Unknown" instead of "Unsupported"

Bug Fixes:

• Fix bug where older plugins were being installed into the wrong directory and thus not working.
• Troubleshooting page was unable to provide details on I2C bus on BeagleBone's
• Fix problem in the 2.7 Pi image where omxplayer was not fully installed or working thus preventing mp4 videos from playing. Fixing this does require using the new 2.7.1 image for the Pi.

Upgrade Instructions:

If you have a system running 2.7, you can go to the FPP about page (about.php) and click on the "Manual Update" button. It should only take a minute or two to upgrade.

If you have a system running 2.4-2.6, you can go to the FPP about page (about.php) and click on the "Manual Update" button. At that point, a big green "Upgrade" bar should appear. You will get all the improvements above except those marked with the "requires re-imaging" notes on the release note for all the versions is upgrading through. Note: there are a LOT of changes in this release. The "Upgrade" button will take several minutes. BeagleBones should take about 15 minutes. Newer Pi 3's are about 10 minutes. Single core Pi's may take over 30 minutes.

2.7

New Features:

• Bootup enhancements:
  • Based on latest OS releases. 2019-04-08-raspbian-stretch-lite for the Pi and bone-debian-9.9-console-armhf-2019-04-28 for the BeagleBones. (requires re-imaging)
  • New "Boot Delay" advanced setting for systems that startup too fast and network isn't fully available.
  • Faster boot by separating various FPP services into separate systemd services that can run in parallel.
• New Plugin management screen and supporting code. Plugins themselves can provide much of the metadata that used be in FPP's repo
• I2C OLED display support
  • Supports SSD1306 (both 64x128 and 32x128 sizes) and SH1106 OLED's
  • Default display shows network information, FPPD status, and information about currently playing sequence/media
  • For new Capes, can use EEPROM information to provide push button actions for menus, tests, sensor information, etc..
• VirtualDisplay and VirtualMatrix Enchancements:
  • Add ability to show a background image in the Virtual Display
  • Add support for 16bpp framebuffers in both channel outputs
• Allow capes that only provide certain functionality to "hide" functionality they don't provide.
• Channel Tester Updates:
  • New "Cycle" test modes on Display Testing page
  • Move RGB test modes to the top above single channel test modes
• Input/Output updates
  • LED Panels page supports flipping from "front view" to "back view".
  • Add "Universe count" for e1.31 input/output to easily define large numbers of universes that need to go to the same place.
  • Add support to configure internal pullups for GPIO inputs
• Playlist/Player/Scheduler updates:
  • New "Image" playlist entry to display a static image on the HDMI output
  • New sunset/sunrise options (need to set longitude and latitude)
  • Add "Even/Odd" settings for scheduler to schedule playlists on alternating days
• MultiSync/Discovery updates:
  • Much faster loading of MultiSync UI page.
    • No longer uses AVAHI by default.
    • Load remote host info via AJAX calls instead of on the web server in PHP.
  • Remove entries from internal cache if not seen for more than an hour.
  • Much faster discovery API's for xLights to use
• Event updates:
  • Add ability to use raw event ID values in control channels instead of using 10x the event ID value.
• REST API updates:
  • Status response now contains sensor readings (temperature/voltage). Displayed on OLED and status page.
  • API for inserting items into Playlists
  • New API for PixelOverlays so no need to use the Perl API
  • New API for Models
  • New REST API for managing/installing plugins
  • New REST API for managing/installing generic config files
  • New REST API for querying available sequences
  • New REST API for querying cape information
• MQTT updates:
  • support for stopNow and stopGraceful
  • bunch of new topics for manipulating playlists
• BBB specific:
  • Don't configure all the pins for GPIO output on boot (faster boot). Configure when needed.
  • Allow BBB string capes to use both PRU's to optimize output if DMX/Pixelnet is not needed
  • Allow loading of cape port -> GPIO/Pin mapping from Cape EEPROM
  • Support for a newly discovered 1:4 P10 panel with a new interleave setting.
• Pi specific:
  • Update rpi_ws281x library to new version to support Pi 3A+
  • GPIO input page lists all the proper wiring pi pins.
  • Support for "spixel" library for controlling APA102/LPD6803/WS2801 pixels from multiple outputs
• Miscellaneous updates:
  • Removed old fppconvert binary and UI parts.
  • Removed old unused code in E1.31 bridge mode
  • Add 'Images' tab to File Manager
  • Allow a FPP instance to serve its git clone to other FPP instances so all systems do not need internet access to pull in updates.
  • Add i2cdetect to Troubleshooting Commands output
  • Update Makefile to allow building binaries in a separate subdir
  • Send test email to configured email address instead of root@localhost
  • Update max LOR controller ID to 240

Bug Fixes:

• Hide files that start with a . from playlist editor
• Hide 169.254.* IP's from FPP systems list (invalid)
• Fix some cases where omxplayer existing causing crashes
• Don't show ttyUSB0 as potential serial output if it doesn't exist
• Flash to eMMC is not available if filesystem has been expanded
• Fix start channel auto-set between BBB string grouped sections
• Fix problems if eseq start channel is 0
• Fix some problems trying to configure various types of RTC's
• Fixes some problems with special characters in WIFI networks and passwords
• Fixes some problems with special characters in playlists
• Cleanup non-looping effects when they finish
• Miscellaneous bug fixes in new v2.x playlist code.
• Fix email setup

Upgrade Instructions:

If you have a system running 2.4-2.6, you can go to the FPP about page (about.php) and click on the "Manual Update" button. At that point, a big green "Upgrade" bar should appear. You will get all the improvements above except those marked with the "requires re-imaging" notes on the release note for all the versions is upgrading through. Note: there are a LOT of changes in this release. The "Upgrade" button will take several minutes. BeagleBones should take about 15 minutes. Newer Pi 3's are about 10 minutes. Single core Pi's may take over 30 minutes.

2.6

New Features:

• Support for new FSEQ file format (requires updates to xLights/Vixen to generate new format):
  • Compression - v2 files are about 10% the size of older fseq files
  • Sparse data - xLights/Vixen can generate fseq files that only contains the channel data needed for that specific FPP instance greatly reducing the size of the files
• Several Playlist enhancements:
  • Ability to pass arguments to scripts in Playlist Editor and for Event scripts
  • Add ability to use playlists within playlists
  • Update PlaylistEntryDynamic class to allow multiple entries in the dynamic playlist
  • Add ability to call plugin on another host from master from Dynamic Playlist
  • Reload playlist in fppd when it is changed on disk
• Multisync enhancements:
  • Multicast "All Remotes" option instead of broadcast to work better with Wifi based remotes
  • Ability to specify what types of files (sequences, media, events, scripts, etc...) to sync to remotes
  • New discovery mechanism for detecting FPP instances (to be used by xLights as well)
• New "boot" callback for UserCallbackHook for plugins to do things at boot time
• "FPP After Hours" plugin available from plugin list (internet radio stations)
• Allow reversing channel data when using Remap Output Processor
• New "Compact" status page for running from cell phones
• Allow channel remap output processor to reverse RGBW pixels
• More information added to system information json (to be used by xLights)
• New framework for REST API, start adding some REST API's for playlists

Bug Fixes:

• Update volume in UI when changed on system
• Fix problems in scheduler if the time jumps forward (ex: NTP kicks in)
• Fix problems with playlists scheduled across Saturday midnight
• Fix problem with e1.31 packet that use a non-0 start code
• Fix problem with BBB ws2811 strings on GPIO0 ports causing flicker/random data
• Fix problem where the currently running playlist would not be properly stopped when a new playlist was started

Upgrade Instructions:

If you have a system running 2.4 or 2.5.x, you can go to the FPP about page (about.php) and click on the "Manual Update" button. At that point, a big green "Upgrade" bar should appear. You will get all the improvements above except those marked with the "requires re-imaging" notes on the release note for all the versions is upgrading through. Note: there are a LOT of changes in this release. The "Upgrade" button will take several minutes. BeagleBones should take about 15 minutes. Newer Pi 3's are about 10 minutes. Single core Pi's may take over 30 minutes.

At this point, there are no images for 2.6. You need to install the latest 2.5 image and do the "Manual Update" steps above.

2.5.3

Mostly a collection of bugs fixes and stability improvements for 2.5.

• [BBB] Fix 1/32 64x64 panels on PocketScroller
• [BBB] Ability to select "7 bit blank last" color depth to work around issues with some panels. Better fix will hopefully come in the future
• Fix a bunch of warnings in the PHP logs
• Don't add escape codes into HexDump of channel data, causing crashes with debug logging turned on
• Fix problems of videos not starting on remote if master is also playing a video
• Add invert option to VirtualDisplay to help integration with Vixen users
• Fix display of file sizes over 2GB
• Fix negative time display with files over 2GB
• Reduce some playlist logging from Info level to Debug to prevent logs from becoming too large

2.5

New Features

• Detect if SD card does not have expanded filesystem and display action banner to do something with it
• Ability to create a new partition in unused space (instead of expanding into it) to allow creating a FAT or BTRFS partition for storage.
• Allow setting a "First Controller ID" setting for LOR output
• Scheduler allows scheduling playlists across midnight

Bug Fixes

• Fix FPD channel range detection
• Use FPP for default MQTT client ID
• Add warning/info about requiring gateway address
• rpi_ws2811 needs to not crash if only one string is defined
• Update playlist UI to add duration of sequence only entries
• Send plugin callbacks earlier to prevent sequence/media being out of sync at start
• Output processors were called twice
• Pause entry paused for unpredictable amounts
• Fix some issues with FPP connect upload from xLights of sequences with strange characters/spaces

Upgrade instructions

If you have a system running 2.1 through 2.4, you can go to the FPP about page (about.php) and click on the "Manual Update" button. At that point, a big green "Upgrade" bar should appear. You will get all the improvements above except those marked with the "requires re-imaging" notes on the release note for all the versions is upgrading through. Note: there are a LOT of changes in this release. The "Upgrade" button may take several minutes.

Images will be made available in a few days. Using the 2.4 image and doing the updates is the best option at this point.

2.4.2

Just a quick update to fix three issues with 2.4:

• Icons for Pi 3B+ and ZeroW
• Fix for remotes that don't shut their lights off at then end of sequences
• Fix upload of compressed sequences with spaces in there name

To install, use the 2.4 image and go to the "about.php" page and click on the Manual Update button.

2.4

New Features

• Support for gzip compression of fseq files while uploading from xLights (2018.44 or newer)
• Ask to copy settings/sequences/etc... onto newly formatted storage locations
• Playlist "pause" entry can now support fractional seconds
• Support for Adafruit PiRTC (pcf8523)
• Bind bridge mode UDP inputs to all interfaces, UDP data can come from any network
• Playlist page will display total duration for the playlist
• Filemanager now displays various information about media
• Multisync - can now manually enter IPs for remotes that are not discoverable (F16v3) or on another subnet
• Updates to backup/restore to allow network settings, others to be restored.

Bug Fixes

• BBB boot up was slower than necessary with v2.3 due to some changes from TI
• Remotes may blank/blink between sequences
• MQTT authorization updates, hostname updates
• Bug in scheduler which would occasionally cause playlists to stop gracefully prematurely
• Don't allow sending UDP data to itself. This was causing various network buffer fills and lockups
• Fix various outputs that only required a single channel (gpio) not working correctly (no data loading)
• Fix scripts that used to reference /opt/fpp/bin.pi
• Fix Mutlisync expert view to properly display if Update Available
• WiFi SSID/PSK not allowing various special characters
• Playlist shoudl allow sequences/music/videos with special characters
• NRF output fixed to work with 2.x
• RasClock RTC not working
• Multisync - media sync now occurs every 1/2 second, allows faster catchups.
• Multisync - media sync bugs/fixes to prevent getting out of sync, back and forth slow/fast, etc...
• omxplayer -b flag added to use a black background to prevent linux command line stuff from showing
• Various issues with Pi Matrix and others that had their channels shifted

Upgrade instructions

If you have a system running 2.1 through 2.3, you can go to the FPP about page (about.php) and click on the "Manual Update" button. At that point, a big green "Upgrade" bar should appear. You will get all the improvements above except those marked with the "requires re-imaging" notes on the release note for all the versions is upgrading through. Note: there are a LOT of changes in this release. The "Upgrade" button may take several minutes.