And the most important change is, we finally have removed all dependencies to the JQWidgets references. And what a change this is. With every update of JQWidgets we found ourself in a lot of trouble. Library inconsistencies, changed behaviours and every time when we updated we had to make a lot of changes. BUT! There is one page left which depends on this library collection.
Triggers
Yes, the triggers. We found out that these are used a lot. And to give you all some time to be able to migrate these triggers we kept this page is it is. Changing the trigger system user interface itself would have take a full week to be done when working on it full time. Also we needed to fix some bugs in the automation rules and add functionalities. Now these have been fixed and are added you are able to transfer your triggers to the automation rules. We will be removing the triggers section within the next month, be sure to have them replaced with the automation rules.
Leave the daypart triggers where they are! We will remove them for you.
Change log
I think you all want to know what has changed with the web interface overhaul. Most of the functionalities have staid intact. But we also took the opportunity to make some stuff better. So, here it is with the most important changes:
- Webservice defaults to HTTPS
- Server runs in SSL or non SSL exclusively for ALL services
- Added support for HTTP1.1 with the server running on non SSL,
- Added support for HTTP2 and SPDY 3.1 when running in SSL,
- All HTTP based protocols are available on one single port. No more need to open multiple ports to be able to communicate,
- Bug fixes in the automation rules,
- Bug fixes in the HTTP processor which has been fully replaced,
- Bug fixes in the web interface,
- Refactored 40+ interface pages,
- Improved websocket handling,
- Server core runs on the latest available JRE (8u91),
- HTTPS moved to ALPN implementation,
- Various memory leaks,
- Improved graphs handling,
- Added more then 30 JSON RPC functions,
- Web interfaces are fully detached, no more server side parsing.
- Users are able to create custom web interfaces and set this in the configuraiton file,
- Updated server broadcast to be much smaller,
- Authentication is now RPC based,
- When latitude and longitude are not set use the default one,
- Fixed dashboard and other pages not automatically updated,
- Added Websocket available icon including reason when not available,
- Improved error handling,
- Fixes in various plugins,
- Added library search to XBMC/Kodi plugin,
- Added WOL to automation rules,
- Added weekdays to automation rules,
- Added data modifiers, these plugins make it possible to manipulate data when they enter the system,
- Removed udplaicate code and replaced them with general libraries for both Java and Javascript based components,
- Upgraded Pi4J to version 1.1-snapshot to be able to support the Raspberry Pi 3!
And about 100+ other changes all related to replacing jqwidgets with default bootstrap, to see all the changes we have done browse up to 01-12-2015 at our commit page at: https://bitbucket.org/pidome/pidome-server/commits/all
Are we there yet?
No by far we are not. Did you know we have moved to Jira? This system allows us to streamline our bug reports and feature requests a lot more! All work we will be doing will be registered and planned in this system. We thank Atlassian for their support and supply us with an Open Source license. This system will help to develop a lost faster!
If you are interested in to see in what we still have planned to do (form which 95% are your requests!) head over to our Jira page at: https://pidome.atlassian.net/ .
We have also done some other changes:
- Improved out development process and moved to "Dynamic Systems Development Method" with the MoSCoW approach,
- Changed build process,
- We are now using Raspberry Pi's to build all components,
- Move from Bitbucket issues/requests to Jira issues/requests,
- Participating in a Pilot program for monitoring and drive actuators for rural hosptials in Africa.
Ohw, and we are doing some cool stuff in the background, ever heard of smart mirrors ;) ?
And ahh yes, a lot of you have asked about how to develop drivers, devices, scripted drivers using ECMAScript, etc.. Let me tell you: We are busy creating a development package based on NetBeans!
Make sure to follow us at: https://twitter.com/Pi_Dome to make sure you follow the latest news.
Team expansion
As you probably have read at: https://pidome.org/info/blog-news/2016/5/13/welcome-a-new-ui-designer-an-exciting-project-involvement-and-development-progress-update.html We have expanded our team with Berend. By having a full blown UI/UX designer we will be capable to supply improved and better clients! They are not there yet, but what this guy can do... Man... be prepared! The full theam can be seen at: https://pidome.org/pidome-team/
But this is not all, We have been talking to another graphics designer who is capable to bring us to an higher level, more information soon!
A big thanks!
I want to give a big thanks to the current PiDome team making it possible to supply this new Most Stable Alpha build. Their input was most valuable to be able to take this path. And even more thanks to the community by supplying a load of input on the web interfaces and improving them.
Download
And to end this news post:
Download the newest most stable build here at bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/pidome/pidome-server/downloads/pidome-server-snapshot.zip
Install
Please follow the instructions at: https://pidome.org/support/server-install.html
Upgrade
When you upgrade, make sure you move your installation to /opt/pidome/pidome-server/ prior to overwrite it with the new version and copy the new pidome-server init script to /etc/init.d/.
Bug reports
Try out the latest most stable build and report any issues you find at: https://pidome.org/support/bug-report.html
Continuation
We keep on developing and our goal to reach the first BETA release has been set to be there in five months from now.
