Relevant links:
- User guides: https://brewblox.netlify.app/
- Previous release notes: https://brewblox.netlify.app/user/release_notes.html
- Project board: https://github.com/orgs/Brewblox/projects/1
- Code repositories: https://github.com/Brewblox
Brewblox release 2021/01/11
firmware release date: 2020/11/02
The various setting and configurable options suffered from being scattered throughout the UI.
To remedy this, we introduced the admin page.
Settings and actions for the system itself, and all dashboards, services, and Builder layouts can be found here.
For example, we merged all the temperature unit settings into a single menu.
The Wizardry button has been moved to the admin page.
To help new users, a prominent “Get Started” button is displayed if there are no dashboards.
The Brewery page already made it possible to show a maximized Builder layout.
This page is useful for kiosk mode or wall-mounted monitors, but unintuitive to find.
To remedy this, Builder layouts are shown alongside dashboards and services in the sidebar. Builder layout pages can be set as homepage for the brewblox UI.
We recognize this may be unwanted clutter for those who already have a lot of dashboards, and included the option to not display some or all Builder layouts in the sidebar.
These options can be edited using the new admin page.
For those using a touch screen and kiosk mode for Brewblox, virtual keyboards offered as browser extension or host application proved to be bugged, unworkable, or plain ugly.
We like the concept of having a wall-mounted kiosk mode monitor in your brewery, and decided to add our own virtual keyboard.
Input fields now let you open a virtual keyboard dialog to edit the value.
On mobile, the most intuitive way to close a settings dialog is to press the Back button on the phone itself.
Sadly, this does not work well when combined with dialogs that are shown without the page URL changing.
We have now implemented our own workaround to ensure that if you press the Back button, the UI behaves as expected:
- If a dialog is open, the dialog is closed.
- If multiple dialogs are open, only the top-most dialog is closed.
- If no dialogs are open, the browser navigates to the previous page.
To improve visibility for a popular service, we added a UI service and widget for the Tilt service.
The service page will show all currently publishing Tilt devices.
Changes
- (feature) Added a centralized admin page. The settings for dashboards, services, and builder layouts can be found here.
- (feature) The back button will now first attempt to close a single open dialog instead of navigating to the previous page.
- (feature) Added virtual keyboard support for input fields. The keyboard layout is configurable using the admin page.
- (feature) Added the Tilt service page.
- (feature) Added the Tilt widget.
- (feature) Content of the Webframe widget is now scalable.
- (feature) A popup is now shown to iOS+HTTPS users when the UI fails to make a websocket connection. The popup offers to redirect to HTTP.
- (feature) Builder layouts are now selectable from the sidebar.
- (feature) Added option to admin page to not show Builder layouts on sidebar.
- (feature) Added option to Builder layout actions to not show layout on sidebar.
- (feature) You can now toggle to show the Spark relations diagram scaled to fit the page.
- (feature) Added a menu to the admin page for configuring all service temperature settings.
- (feature) Builder value display parts now have a setting to toggle rendering the part border.
- (feature) Node-red data is now included in
brewblox-ctl backup save. - (feature) The touch delay in brewery layouts is now configurable using the admin page. Options are: Always, Never, Only on mobile. It defaults to Only on mobile.
- (docs) Updated and split the documentation for history and state events.
- (docs) Added a Fermentation fridge guide for new users.
- (enhancement) Replaced the “Waiting for datastore” notification with a spinner shown in the current page.
- (enhancement) The Setpoint Driver widget now also shows the setting field.
- (enhancement) Improved error messages when network calls failed.
- (enhancement) Improved scroll bar positions on pages.
- (enhancement) Added html formatting when blocks, widgets, dashboards, services, or builder layouts are mentioned in notifications.
- (enhancement) Confirmation and select dialogs now use the same color scheme as other input dialogs.
- (enhancement) Added Setpoint Profile display part to layout generated by Fermentation Fridge wizard.
- (enhancement) Reviewed the layouts generated by the Quick Start wizards, and disabled part borders where relevant.
- (enhancement) Improved the default quick actions for the fermentation fridge to better show whether the fridge is in beer or fridge mode.
- (removed) The Brewery entry has been removed from the navigator at the top of the sidebar. Page URL’s remain the same.
- (removed) Removed the Groups action from the Spark action menu.
- (fix) Widgets are no longer sometimes removed when the dashboard ID is changed.
- (fix) Reduced memory footprint during
brewblox-ctl up/brewblox-ctl update. This should prevent the Pi from running out of memory and killing services during startup. - (fix) The Spark Device Info widget can now be selected again in the service page on mobile devices.
- (fix) Block widgets no longer fail to render live updates when opened in dialog on mobile.
- (fix) Graphs no longer sometimes show dotted lines.
- (fix) The heating icon in PID widgets and builder parts now correctly turns red when the heater is active.
- (fix) Icons are rendered correctly when viewing the Builder in Safari browsers.
- (fix) Widgets no longer jump to the old position for a split second when dragged to a new position on a dashboard.
- (fix) Current value is no longer sometimes rendered as
[Object object]when confirming a quick actions value. - (fix) The node-red dir is now assigned to the correct user during
brewblox-ctl add-node-red.
Virtual keyboard rocks !
