Bryan Mayland
TVWBB Hall of Fame
THIS IS NOT A WISHLIST THREAD
If you have a feature request or suggestion, create a thread for it.
THIS IS NOT A WISHLIST THREAD
I know there's not a lot of activity seen between releases and it may make folks wonder just what is going on if anything at all. I've decided to start keeping a little log of notes on things I'm working on because I get excited about them and I want to share them. The added benefit being you can see what's up without checking github all the time. So what's coming down the pipe?
* OpenWrt Attitude Adjustment release. This is done. I've moved off the RC1 and LinkMeter will be based on the Attitude Adjustment release that came out last month.
* rPi bootloader update. Updating to the latest firmware bootloader improves compatibility with new Pis which may come with a Hynix memory chip. Updates to the linux kernel to support this also brings with it a few bonus features.
-- Adjustable memory split means devices with more memory can allocate more to Linux and less to that worthless GPU we do nothing with. Up to 480MB for model B devices. Performance benefit? None. ePeen benefit? Immeasurable.
-- On the fly CPU clock rate adjustment. The CPU will scale between 700MHz and 800Mhz depending on load. Editing the config file can boost this to 900Mhz, 1GHz or more. Performance benefit? Minor. The CPU has a timeslice of 338ms so you've gotta be active for at least that long before you see any boost. Most the pages load in 500ms so they'll see relatively minor decreases in load time. You can also set the CPU to "performance" mode where it stays locked at the high speed to shave a little bit more off but it generally isn't worth it. (No web UI for this, next next version)
-- CPU core temperature readings. Because that seems useful.
-- Supposed 10% speed boost from using FIQ mode on the CPU. So they say. I don't see it.
-- Improved stability of SD card access
-- New USB driver, now with 0.03% less jankiness?
-- 47,065 new lines of code, 6,574 deletions. This was a real **** to merge.
* Low bandwidth HeaterMeter status page. Weighing in at 1.6KB and being entirely built on the server means even the lowest end mobile browsers can handle this
* LED configuration. The meaning of the LEDs can now be adjusted. Here's the list of things I've built in, and the status of these can be inverted as well. This is done in HeaterMeter but I still want to tweak it to get the size down a bit.
* Ability to prevent the configuration restore from launching on a new system. If you F up your config now, you can't just reflash the SD card and get back to stock, because the config system will restore your F-up and F you back the F up. This will be just creating a text file in the partition that windows sees that prevents the backup from restoring. It might be later extended to allowing configuration to be set right from this text file, but not in this release.
I've been working on the bootloader firmware the most. I've spent about 10 hours the past two nights trying to figure out why NONE of my Pis would boot on this new kernel and bootloader. No green light, no nothin. A real kick in the pants after the gobs of hours I spent merging the code to our kernel. Finally I noticed that the micro sd adapter was warped and wasn't making good contact. Damn you, free G.SKILL micro sd adapter! I've ordered a couple new reputable SD cards from Amazon because ain't nobody got no time for this.
If you have a feature request or suggestion, create a thread for it.
THIS IS NOT A WISHLIST THREAD
I know there's not a lot of activity seen between releases and it may make folks wonder just what is going on if anything at all. I've decided to start keeping a little log of notes on things I'm working on because I get excited about them and I want to share them. The added benefit being you can see what's up without checking github all the time. So what's coming down the pipe?
* OpenWrt Attitude Adjustment release. This is done. I've moved off the RC1 and LinkMeter will be based on the Attitude Adjustment release that came out last month.
* rPi bootloader update. Updating to the latest firmware bootloader improves compatibility with new Pis which may come with a Hynix memory chip. Updates to the linux kernel to support this also brings with it a few bonus features.
-- Adjustable memory split means devices with more memory can allocate more to Linux and less to that worthless GPU we do nothing with. Up to 480MB for model B devices. Performance benefit? None. ePeen benefit? Immeasurable.
-- On the fly CPU clock rate adjustment. The CPU will scale between 700MHz and 800Mhz depending on load. Editing the config file can boost this to 900Mhz, 1GHz or more. Performance benefit? Minor. The CPU has a timeslice of 338ms so you've gotta be active for at least that long before you see any boost. Most the pages load in 500ms so they'll see relatively minor decreases in load time. You can also set the CPU to "performance" mode where it stays locked at the high speed to shave a little bit more off but it generally isn't worth it. (No web UI for this, next next version)
-- CPU core temperature readings. Because that seems useful.
-- Supposed 10% speed boost from using FIQ mode on the CPU. So they say. I don't see it.
-- Improved stability of SD card access
-- New USB driver, now with 0.03% less jankiness?
-- 47,065 new lines of code, 6,574 deletions. This was a real **** to merge.
* Low bandwidth HeaterMeter status page. Weighing in at 1.6KB and being entirely built on the server means even the lowest end mobile browsers can handle this
* LED configuration. The meaning of the LEDs can now be adjusted. Here's the list of things I've built in, and the status of these can be inverted as well. This is done in HeaterMeter but I still want to tweak it to get the size down a bit.
Code:
None,
UserOn,
Alarm0L,
Alarm0H,
Alarm1L,
Alarm1H,
Alarm2L,
Alarm2H,
Alarm3L,
Alarm3H,
RfReceive,
LidOpen,
FanOn, // fan > 0%
PitTempReached, // Set once the pit has achieved setpoint for the first time since powerup or lid open
FanMax, // fan at "max speed"
* Ability to prevent the configuration restore from launching on a new system. If you F up your config now, you can't just reflash the SD card and get back to stock, because the config system will restore your F-up and F you back the F up. This will be just creating a text file in the partition that windows sees that prevents the backup from restoring. It might be later extended to allowing configuration to be set right from this text file, but not in this release.
I've been working on the bootloader firmware the most. I've spent about 10 hours the past two nights trying to figure out why NONE of my Pis would boot on this new kernel and bootloader. No green light, no nothin. A real kick in the pants after the gobs of hours I spent merging the code to our kernel. Finally I noticed that the micro sd adapter was warped and wasn't making good contact. Damn you, free G.SKILL micro sd adapter! I've ordered a couple new reputable SD cards from Amazon because ain't nobody got no time for this.
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