Playlists Feature is Now Live!

[fatihak]

This update introduces advanced scheduling functionality through "Playlists," allowing you to view and configure plugins to be displayed at specific times.

Playlists

• Playlists can now be viewed and edited in the new Playlists page, accessible via the icon in the top right of the home page.
• You can create playlists with a Start Time and End Time—plugins added to the playlist will cycle during this interval.
• Overlapping Playlists:
  • If multiple playlists overlap, the one with the shortest time interval (end_time - start_time) takes priority. This allows for a default playlist throughout the day while defining more specific time periods for certain plugins.

Plugin Instances

• The "Schedule Refresh" button is now "Add to Playlist", which creates a Plugin Instance.
• Plugin instances have:
  • Playlist Name – The playlist to add to.
  • Instance Name – A unique name for this instance.
  • Refresh Settings: defines how often the data/image for this plugin should be refreshed/generated
    • "Every X minutes/hours" – Periodic refresh on an interval.
    • "Daily at TIME" – Ideal for less frequent updates (e.g., Newspaper, AI-generated content).
  • Note: Plugins only refresh when they are about to be displayed
• You can trigger a manual update of the display with an existing plugin instance with the "Display Now" button on the playlist page. Note that the button respects the plugin instance's refresh settings so it won't force a refresh if the instance’s rule hasn't triggered yet.

Display Refresh Improvements

• Skipping unnecessary refreshes: The code now checks if a new image is the same as the currently displayed one by comparing their hashes and skips the refresh if they are the same.
• Empty time slots: You can create playlists without any plugins, or set time periods without a playlist if you want to avoid updates during specific times, such as overnight.

Image Upload Plugin

• The Image Upload plugin now supports uploading multiple images. When added to a playlist, the images cycle on each refresh if multiple are provided.

Important Device Settings

• Time Zone: Ensure the time zone is set correctly, as this is to compare with the playlist start/end times.
• Plugin Cycle Interval: Defines how long each plugin is displayed before cycling. Manual updates will also respect this duration. This defaults to 1 hour.

To pull the changes on your PI, all you need to do is pull the latest changes and restart the InkyPi service:

cd InkyPi
git pull
git checkout Playlists
sudo systemctl restart inkypi.service