FPP 7.0 Released!

[dkulp]

The entire FPP team is proud to announce that FPP 7.0 is now released!    This represents more than 7 months of development effort to add a bunch of new features, fix a bunch of bugs, and start preparing for the show season.

Enhancements

• New "OUTPUTS_ENABLED" and "OUTPUTS_DISABLED" Command preset triggers that are fired when Outputs are enabled/disabled
• FPP remotes can play a "fallback.fseq" file if the main fseq is missing
• FSEQ files can now contain special "Effects" and "Command Preset" timing tracks that can trigger based on timing marks instead of custom On effects on control channels.
• Backups
  
  • Changing settings will now automatically trigger a configuration backup
  • Backups can be configured to save to an external device (USB) or other FPP host
  • Restoring backups from remote FPP hosts is now fully enabled
• UI Enhancements
  
  • Playlist "breadcrumbs" displayed for nested/inserted playlists
  • Media files can be played directly from the Playlist drop down on the status page
  • MultiSync page now handles a mixed setup of hostnames and IP address better (CORS issues)
  • MultiSync page will now use the configured background colors of the FPP remotes
  • "Send MultiSync Packets" checkbox made more prominent on MultiSync page
  • Proxies page can now have a description for each entry
  • Popup dialogs are now used for more places where content is streamed from the device such as the expand storage, flash to eMMC/USB, cape eeprom upgrade, etc....
  • File sizes for files larger than 2G will now display
  • REST API Help and FPP Command Help now separated onto separate pages (page was too long to be useful)
  • Ability to "Add" and provision network interfaces that don't yet exist. Should allow provisioning of wlan0 adapters when only eth0 are available at first boot
  • Storage tab can unmount unused storage devices (use with caution)
  • Add "Top" button to page to scroll back to top when scrolling down longer pages
  • Playlists will automatically scroll the currently playing entry into view
• New features for Capes/Hats
  
  • Upgrade/installing eeproms should now be easier from the Cape Info pages. Selection based on vendor/model/version is available
  • DPIPixel based capes now support Pi 4's as well as 4 channel pixels
  • PiHats now support four channel pixel types
  • Per output/string testing functionality added to string based capes on the string configuration page
  • Support for eFuses/relays - capes can now specify pins to enable ports and get notification of Fuse triggers
  • Current monitors- For capes that provide current monitoring per port, there is a new Current Monitor status page. "Pixel Counting" is available on that page.
  • OLED display can display WIFI QR code when put into Access Point mode
  • Support for ADS7828 A2D sensors
  • Support for using IIO for A2D sensors
• New features for Raspberry Pi
  
  • On a Pi4 - the storage tab in settings now allows for flashing FPP to USB and booting from USB. Very useful for USB3 attached SATA drives. Note: heat is an issues with USB attached storage. The Pi4 NEEDS good heat syncs and fans to stay cool when using USB attached storage.
  • Kiosk mode - external links are now disables/hidden when running in Kiosk mode to prevent going to sites and not being able to return (no "back" button)
  • System setting to enable PWM fan control on GPIO14
  • Better support for various HDMI touch screens made for the Pi (1024x600 setting available)
• New features in Channel Outputs
  
  • Twinkly outputs will now revalidate tokens and restart within a couple minutes if the Twinkly device power cycles.
  • "Control Channel" functionality has been moved to a dedicated Channel Output on the "Other" tab. Multiple control channels can be configured.
  • New uDMX channel output driver for uDMX based USB->DMX adapters
• New Features in Overlay Models
  
  • WLED effects have been updated to the latest WLED
  • Sound reactive WLED effects are available (reacts to the sound played from that FPP instance)
  • New C++ API's for PluginDevelopers
  • New "CurlManager" for handling asynchronous HTTP calls
  • New "Timers" for handling periodic tasks
  • New "Events" API for getting additional events (same events sent to MQTT)

Major Changes/Incompatibilities

• Persistent network names for USB ethernet devices will now flip to the Linux persistent naming convention (en#######) instead of eth0/eth1. Devices may need reconfiguring.
• The Web frontend has been upgraded from Bootstrap 4.4 to Bootstrap 5. (Bootstrap is a library uses for UI widgets/layouts) Some FPP plugins may not work properly until they are updated. Please report any issues to the plugin developers.
• Removal of deprecated API's - the old "Rest like APIs" from the FPP 1.x days that were part of fppjson.php and fppxml.php have been removed. Users will need to migrate to the proper REST API's in "/api".
• Removal of Linsn Panel driver - this actually has been broken for a while, but no one reported it so is likely not used.
• Upload of files with special characters will not strip the special characters. Filenames should remain correct.

Other updates/changes

• PHP processing was split from the Apache HTTPD service. Due to this change, older versions of xLights cannot upload files to FPP7.

Upgrade Instructions
It is strongly recommended to do a full "OS Level" upgrade or re-image instead of attempting to upgrade directly from any older FPP version. There are several new features that will not work if an OS level upgrade is not done. There are two ways to do so:

• Re-image - you can backup your 6.x configuration, create a new image, and restore the configuration.
• In-place upgrade - this is new and requires you to have the latest FPP 5.5 or newer and all updates already running on the device. Download the appropriate "fppos" file to your computer. Make sure the file extension is still fppos (some browsers will rename it). Upload it to the "File Manager" on the FPP instance. Then go to the about page. Under the normal "Manual Upgrade", a new Upgrade OS button should appear. Click it and wait a LONG time. When done, it should reboot into 7.0. At that point, go to the Uploads tab of the FPP File Manager and delete the fppos file. Note: In SOME cases, the reboot will fail due to library replacement. In that case, a power cycle may be required to get it back up and running.

Selecting an image
For Raspberry Pi series including Pi B, Pi B+, Pi 3, Pi 3+, Pi 4 and Pi Zero use this image
https://github.com/FalconChristmas/fpp/releases/download/7.0/FPP-v7.0-Pi.img.zip
For Beaglebone Black, Beaglebone Green, PocketBeagle, and Beaglebone Green Gateway use this image
https://github.com/FalconChristmas/fpp/releases/download/7.0/FPP-v7.0-BBB.img.zip


Additional features not part of the Pi/BBB Images

• FPP can now run natively on MacOS. It's not a simple image and must be "installed" from source. More details will come later, but you would need to download the https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FalconChristmas/fpp/master/SD/FPP_Install_Mac.sh file and run it to get all the pieces working.
• FPP can now be installed on pretty much any Armbian based Single Board Computer. Devices like Orange Pi's, Banana Pi's, Nano Pi's Libre SBC's, etc... can now run FPP. Unfortunately, every single Armbian distribution is tied directly to the device it is designed for so we cannot provide images for all of them. There would be 10's or 100's of them which would be too time consuming. However, installing FPP is not hard. See the README.Armbian: https://github.com/FalconChristmas/fpp/blob/master/SD/README.Armbian
• FPP can now be installed on other Linux distributions such as Ubuntu 22.10 and Linux Mint that use PHP 8 instead of PHP 7.4

[k6ccc]

Upgrade OS in progress on both of my PocketBeagle FPP instances - had been 7.x-master-89-gd641affc

For future reference, please include the download location for the .fppos files.  You only linked the image files.  Although I finally found the correct file, for those of us that can barely spell github (let alone use it), it would be easier to have the link rather than having to hunt around for it.

[algerdes]

"PHP processing was split from the Apache HTTPD service. Due to this change, older versions of xLights cannot upload files to FPP7."

Could you please identify what you consider "older versions of xLights"?  Thank you.

[Poporacer]

For future reference, please include the download location for the .fppos files.

You can actually get it directly from your FPP device in the upgrade OS Section
You cannot view this attachment.

[k6ccc]

Well, this did not work well.  Both PocketBeagles appeared to complete the update via the .fppos method in less than 10 minutes.  Clicked on button to reboot at the end of the update and neither would respond to the web GUI - ping was OK.  OK, it said it may take a power cycle.  Waited a half hour after the reboot and did a power cycle on the Beagles.  Now neither will respond to a ping - and of course the web GUI does not respond.  Waited almost 15 minutes.  My DHCP server does not show any attempt to request an IP from either Beagle after the power cycle.  Power cycled again with same result - bricked.

Guess I will need to try the .img file tonight (I'm not home right now).  Pain in the a__ to do - as stored, they are hard to get to...

[k6ccc]

You can actually get it directly from your FPP device in the upgrade OS Section

I guess that is useful if you don't mind having to download the same 2/3 GB file for every FPP instance.
And the specific instructions in the first post do not mention that...  Those instructions state to download the file with your web browser and upload it to the FPP file manager.  I guess that's what I get for following directions...

[k6ccc]

Well, this did not work well. 

UPDATE!  After the third power cycle, both BeagleBones came up in 7.0

Version Info
FPP Version:	7.0
Platform:	BeagleBone Black (PocketBeagle)
FPP OS Build:	v2023-07
OS Version:	Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)
Hardware Serial Number:	1744GPB50414
Kernel Version:	5.10.168-fpp
System Boot Time:	2023-07-26 14:01:27
fppd Uptime:	02:07
Local Git Version:	ff5e66d ChangeLog
Remote Git Version:	ff5e66d

[tbone321]

For those who don't want to search, here is the link to the fppos files
https://github.com/FalconChristmas/fpp/releases?after=1.7
As said above, it can also be directly accessed in the FPP About section for instances of FPP that have internet access.  I agree that is is better if you can re-image the card but as in my case for one of my controllers, it is way too difficult to get to the card if there is another way to upgrade, even if it takes longer.  I will re-image the other controllers but for the difficult one, I will use the fppos file and run the in place upgrade tomorrow.  

[Poporacer]

I guess that is useful if you don't mind having to download the same 2/3 GB file for every FPP instance.

I totally agree, I have 10 devices I need to upgrade, I was just pointing to a quick way to find it.

I guess that's what I get for following directions...

LOL

[bloojoop]

I guess that is useful if you don't mind having to download the same 2/3 GB file for every FPP instance.

There is an option to not have to redownload.  From the instance where you had downloaded it, go to the multisync page, select other instances (same platform such as all BBB or all Pi do not mix selecdtion), then select "Copy OS upgrade files", select the fppos file that you want to copy (in case there are multiple), and finally hit run.  This will copy the file from the first instance to all the others that you have selected.  Then you can run the fppos upgrade from the help about menu just as if you manually copied it to all devices.
You cannot view this attachment.   

[algerdes]

I simply copied the .fppos file to my local computer from the github site.
After that, it was uploaded to each of the FPP instances, then I ran it from About page.  
FYI - several of my FPP devices do not have internet available, therefore this method is used year round.

[JonD]

Then you can run the fppos upgrade from the help about menu just as if you manually copied it to all devices.

This worked well except that I still had to manually power each device after the upgrade.  The K8Pi's all stated "No Network" and "FPPD Not Started" after the update.  Not a big deal to power cycle them when they are all in the house, but it will be a much bigger deal when they are all outside in a winter storm and it is -60f below windchill.  Is there a way to upgrade the OS without having to unplug the Pi afterword?

[JonB256]

but it will be a much bigger deal when they are all outside in a winter storm and it is -60f below windchill.

You cannot view this attachment.    

[JonD]

That's what I was afraid of.   That is not a realistic option unfortunately.  I have an IP power device that I can power cycle the Master Player in the basement, but most of the new Kulps are powered from circuits that can't really be shut off.  To get around this I would have run power from other sources which would be a bigger deal than just running a network cord I was trying to avoid. 

[Poporacer]

Is there a way to upgrade the OS without having to unplug the Pi afterword?

I am in the middle of updating my devices and have completed 5 of them and have yet have one that needed a power cycle.... Not sure why you are?