FPP 8.4 released!

[dkulp]

FPP 8.4 is released!

This release consists mostly of bug fixes as the result of digging through crash logs, bug reports, zoom room issues, etc...  The main purpose is to provide a release that rolls all the crash fixes and other bug fixes into an easy to install/use release package.

NOTE: The OS level has not changed since 8.3. There is no need to do an fppos update if coming from 8.3.

Enhancements

• Add Advanced option to stop Colorlight outputs from being disabled if ethernet link is down when fppd starts
• Update rpi_ws281x to support newer Pi 3A+/3B/3B+/CM3
• Update UDPOutput to support a "blocking" mode to slow down packet output to allow slower controllers to keep up better. (Advanced UI setting)
• Schedule Preview - mark items that will be skipped in red and note priority reason

Bug Fixes (since 8.3.0)

• Fix crash when manually stopping playlist using ArtNet/SMPTE plugins as timecode generator
• Fix crash using HTTP to detect some AlphaPix controllers
• Fix pixel output on right half of K128
• Fix crashes on SanCloud BeagleBone Enhanced due to to gpiochip label differences
• Fix api/scripts//run
• Fix api/events/:eventId/trigger
• Fix failed plugin install messaging
• Fix HDMI audio out on Pi's
• Fix crash if efuse enable pin cannot be configured. Warn and continue, but don't crash
• Fix a potential crash if PLAYLIST_STOPPED command preset is called
• Fix crash if Chase/Cycle custom pattern is selected, but pattern is empty
• Fix crash if pixel configuration or other configuration json is invalid during output setup
• Fix tooltips on MQTT page being truncated
• Fix some crashes with dynamic playlists that are empty
• Fix some crashes with invalid pixel overlay model configurations
• Fix crashes with RGBMatrix (panel hats for Pi) on older armv6 Pi's
• Fix a crash when sending invalid WLED effect commands
• Fix a crash if fseq file is corrupt

Installation Instructions
If you have a system running 8.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 on the main status page. Click on that to start the update process. It may take a long time to upgrade. Likely 5-10 minutes. You will need to reboot after the upgrade is complete to finish the upgrade process.

For users of FPP 7.x or older, 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 7.x configuration, create a new image, and restore the configuration.
• In-place upgrade - this requires you to have FPP 5.5 and all the updates for 5.5 or FPP 6.x/7.x 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 8.3. At that point, go to the Uploads tab of the FPP File Manager and delete the fppos file. An alternate method to do an in-place upgrade if you are only upgrading one device AND the device has internet connectivity, is to select the 8.3 fppos (download) file and then click on the Upgrade OS button. This will download the fppos file and then install it as mentioned above. This will still take a LONG time and if you are doing this on more than one device, you will essentially be downloading the same file multiple times so is probably not the best way.

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 use this image
https://github.com/FalconChristmas/fpp/releases/download/8.4/FPP-v8.4-Pi.img.zip

For Beaglebone Black, Beaglebone Green, PocketBeagle, and Beaglebone Green Gateway use this image
https://github.com/FalconChristmas/fpp/releases/download/8.4/FPP-v8.4-BBB.img.zip

[lrhorer]

I am currently running 8.4 on a system with input GPIO4 enabled on the falling edge to run a Python script.  I need to have the script check both GPIO4 and GPIO17 to see if one or both are low.  In Python, when I use

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
GPIO.setup(4,GPIO.IN)
GPIO.setup(17,GPIO.IN)

I get an error lgpio.error: 'GPIO busy' on the GPIO.setup(4,GPIO.IN) line.

Note this script runs under more conditions than only when GPIO4 is low, so I cannot merely assume GPIO4 is low.

What would be the best way to handle this?  Gpiozero also does not work.

[MikeKrebs]

I might not understand how Python and FPP play together but I think FPP has that pin "busy". So skip the setup and just read "the other one".

[dkulp]

Do you have a hat installed that may be consuming pins?

You could likely run "gpioinfo" from the command line it it may show which process is consuming the GPIO pins.