Hi all.
We have been very very busy since the last v3 alpha release around Christmas time. This release has been a huge amount of work and brings us significantly closer to a semi-stable beta release. We really hope that the next release will be stable enough to be a beta (hopefully including a return of the Gallery, Extensions, and direct control from the microscope).
For now, anyone who wants to can try the v3.0.0-alpha5.
Using the pre-release
To install the pre-release on a microscope:
- Using Raspberry Pi Imager 2
- Select App Options → Edit Content repository
- Select Use custom URL and paste in
https://build.openflexure.org/raspbian-openflexure/manifest.json - Click Apply and Restart
- Then select Raspberry Pi 4 → OpenFlexure Raspbian v3 Pre-Release → OpenFlexure Raspbian v3.0.0-alpha5
- OR download the image directly and install with Raspberry Pi Imager 1.x (Imager 2 will not allow customisation with a directly downloaded image)
What has changed.
Some highlights of the new release are:
OS changes:
- OS Now supports Raspberry Pi Imager 2
- Smaller SD card image size (by cutting down on installed packages that were not needed)
Server changes:
- Created ScanWorkflows, a backend change that allows switching scan methods. Enabling new types of scanning:
- Raster Scan
- Snake Scan
- CChip Scan (experimental, requires a configuration change to use)
- Transition frontend from the end of life Vue2 to Vue3 which is in active development!
- Improvements to the simulation microscope including more simulation samples and camera options. Speeding up development.
- “Jogging” movement. The microscope can now move continuously when an arrow key is held.
- Improved server side UI specification. This brings us closer to “Things” being able to define their own tab, which will soon enable plugins in v3.
- A user interface for recentring and range of motion.
- Improved fallback server interface.
- Backlash correction in scanning.
- OpenCV camera switching. Enabling changing between cameras in settings when using the manual configuration.
- A huge number of other bug fixes and improvements.
Stitching changes:
- Better error handling and checking whether settings can successfully stitch
- Add support for masking the correlations between pairs of images, depending on your stage performance
- Add metadata to exported JPEG to show information about the scan
“Behind the scenes” changes that will improve development
- Move from LabThings Dependencies to ThingSlots. This has allowed for:
- Much easier communication between Things
- Static type checking
- Simpler action creation.
- Improved testing, including better defined testing environments, separation of integration and unit tests, and tests passing on Windows
- Updated how stitching logs to make sure nothing is buffered or delayed
- Improved plotting of correlations and thresholds in stitching, for setting manual cut offs
- Move correlation code into stitching rather than importing, to allow greater control and less external dependence
- Move the OFM CLI tools into the server repo.
Final word
It has been a huge release, including some big changes upstream in LabThings. There has been a lot of work from the core team (Me, Joe, Beth, William, and Richard) with a lot of help from Ben (@chish). Also thanks to Antonio (@kny5) for migrating the user interface from Vue2 to Vue3, this will make it much easier to maintain and keep modern and secure.
I hope everyone enjoys the new release.
