Binary Packages

• Binary Packages
• Swift 5.1.5 Update

Binary packages are back. The binaries built include the Swift runtime libraries needed making it possible to install this as a single debian package. Going forward, users should install the debian package instead of building from source unless they intend to make changes.

Thanks to this, RPiLight will now focus on a single Swift version at a time, since it is now included with the binary release. With this version, Swift 5.1.5 is now the official version.

YAML & Daylight Savings

• YAML Configuration files are now supported and default, instead of JSON.
• Daylight Savings Time fixes.

YAML support comes with another configuration file breaking change. Please see the updated Configuration.md file for details. This time, some testing was done to make sure that we can use this schema going forward for JSON as well, and is suitable for future features. Unfortunately, the previous version of the schedule file still had too many customizations to make JSON user-friendly that really needed to go.

• Swift 5.1 Support Added. 5.1 and 5.0 officially supported, and 4.x is no longer supported.

Swift 4 support on Raspberry Pi was not the greatest. Swift 5 and 5.1 are in much better shape and are more compatible with Swift 5 on desktop Linux. Swift 5 also includes more complete functionality on Linux that helped get rid of some custom calendar code.

Better than Beta

• Split out the schedule and hardware configuration into schedule.json and config.json.
• Experimental support for MCP4725 over I2C used by some 0-10V controller boards.
• Support for custom I2C addresses for PCA9685 and MCP4725 controllers.
• Support for multiple controllers at the same time. Now you can use multiple PCA9685 HATs.
• Support for Swift 5 and Raspbian Buster.
• Swift 3 is no longer supported and cannot be used to build

Going forward, backwards compatibility should be maintained better than it has up to this point.

0.9.0

Changes:

• Fixes a bug where the light schedule would stop updating after a couple weeks.

Installing on Raspbian Stretch (Only Supported on Raspberry Pi 2/3):

1. Download Both Debian Packages
2. sudo dpkg --install swiftlang_4.1.3_armhf.deb rpilight_0.9.0_armhf.deb

Hotfix: Fix 32-bit Overflow

Fixes an issue where the service would crash because update intervals got too high and overflowed.

Lunar Cycles

New Functionality:

• Can enable a Lunar Cycle to dim parts of your schedule based on the current phase of the moon.
• New, compact configuration file format (w/updated examples).
• Limits increased for PWM frequencies. 16 kHz for built-in, 1.5 kHz for the PCA9685.
• Service now only runs as root on launch. It needs it to access the PWM hardware on the Pi, but can now switch to a lower-privilege user ('pi')

Maintenance:

• Updated build scripts that can produce debian/raspbian packages.
• Under the hood work along with new tests to try to keep things stable, and lay the groundwork for future features.

Quality of Life Improvements

• "./install.sh update" now syncs to the latest tag, not to the latest code
• Swift is now installed in /opt/swift instead of /usr
• Added bootstrap script to make first installs much easier
• Other minor cleanup

Detect Raspberry Pi Boards

The 'board' property in the hardware config is now optional, unless RPiLight cannot detect what board you have.

Make it Better

Improvements:

• Prints details of hardware configuration on start

• Somewhat improved error reporting when loading the configuration

• Supports more than the Pi Zero / 1 GPIO, using a new configuration option

• Can configure the gamma used for calculating brightness

• Can set a channel's brightness (uses gamma) or intensity (raw light percentage) for any event in the schedule

• Ability to set a minimum intensity for a channel

Hotfix: Installer Script on Fresh Raspberry Pi

Fix Installer

The command to unpack the swift tarball didn't actually do the unpack.