Version 2.0.4 Available, Here's What's New
Now that we're back from the East Coast Haunters Convention (ECHC), we didn't waste any time getting back at it. For those of you that have been with us on the Beta side, you know how fast we fix bugs, but now that we've launched, this is our first real "public" update. The first of many to come.
We have a number of improvements and bug fixes we added to this new version of firmware along with some studio enhancements to go along with them.
What's New
Let's jump right into what we added.
Safe States
The first thing we've added is the concept of "Safe States" for channels when using Hard Lock on a controller. From day one, we envisioned Hard Lock as an E-Stop-style way to halt a show during an emergency event. This was based on our existing "Soft Lock" function that works like a lockout-tagout function where it pauses the controller exactly where it is until released. The problem is that pausing everything in place during an emergency can't guarantee a "safe state".
Let me explain through an example. Imagine a controller running a magnetic lock on one channel and stage lighting on another. If Hard Lock simply pauses everything in place, the lock could stay engaged and the lights could be off; not what you want during an emergency. Unplugging the controller drops the lock (the relay de-energizes) but leaves the lights off. What you really want is for the controller to de-energize the lock channel and drive the light channels to 100% on the same trigger. That's what the new "Safe State" setting on each channel does. By default we hold the state until power cycled, but you can now override that per-channel.
IgorBox is a show-control system, not a certified life-safety device. Always pair it with code-compliant safety hardware appropriate to your venue.
Network Transfer Indication
At the show last week, while we were demo-ing, we would show you that the controller would lockout during network operations like downloading new media files or firmware. This would show the Purple Blink "Lockout" indication on the status LED. But it didn't give any feedback on the controller about how far along it was. So we had a couple awkward moments waiting for the controller to finish and not knowing when that would be.
Well, we fixed that! Now when you are downloading or uploading files, the 8 front channel LEDs are used to indicate the percentage it has completed. You can use the LEDs on the front to show you how much has been done and how much is left to do at a quick glance. It answers the questions "is it doing anything?" and "when will it be done?".
This new feature is baked into the networking stack so all file transfers should use this indication going forward.
Crash Reports
We have introduced a new crash reporting system. It's pretty rare for controllers to crash but when they do, it's very helpful for us to get the crash report from the controller. We have added a new button to the controller overview page that shows when a crash report is present on your controller. Studio admins can choose to clear it off of the controller or submit it to us. Submitting locks the controller for about 5 seconds while it uploads to our servers. The report contains controller diagnostics only — firmware state, stack traces, and timing data. No show content, media, or customer data is included. This notifies us and lets us dig into what happened and implement fixes even faster. This is so much better than the old way we were getting these crash reports.
If you have a crash report on your controller, just submit it to us when you have 5-10 seconds to spare in your show. We really appreciate it.
Bugs Fixed
Boot Hang When Offline
This was something we were seeing happen intermittently and surfaced a couple of times at the show last weekend. I had a chance to put some traces on the demo controllers and dug into it a bit this week. It turns out there was a narrow timing edge case during first boot where a controller could get stuck waiting for the internet before starting the ambient show. Normal offline operation was not affected. This was extremely hard to pin down but we figured it out. This has been fixed in this version.
Controller Timeout on Live Preview
If you added a particularly large media file to the timeline and started a live preview session, the controller would miss some check-ins during the download of the file. This would cause it to drop offline with the uplink. It recovered fine, but it was confusing for anyone that saw it happen. We have fixed this now. This fix coupled with the new network transfer indication makes live preview with new media files feel much more reliable even though nothing really changed on the live preview system directly.
LEDs Flicker During Heavy Network Operations
This has been something we've seen happen occasionally on the new controllers. It surfaced enough at the show last weekend that it bothered me enough to dig into it right when I got home. Turns out this was a timing and priority issue that needed a single tweak to fix. The LEDs are rock solid now and don't flicker even when the controller is loaded to 100%.
What's Next
We have a bunch of new feature enhancement tickets and some other bigger project tickets from last week's show that we'll be working on. For those that have been with us for a while, you know more firmware updates are right around the corner. For those of you that picked up new controllers last week, welcome! If you have any issues or need enhancements, just reach out: help@igorbox.com. Until the next one, let's keep building the awesome!