KootNet Sensors Blog

I have been a bit absent lately but I have come back with improvements to Kootnet Sensors. I will be releasing Beta.34.x soon with the following improvements so far.

• Adjusted Web Portal visuals to better match the light/dark themes
• Adjusted Web Portal visuals for more consistency across pages
• Added many Icons to menus, button and sections to improve overal look
• Added Icon on top Web Portal bar to instantly return to the top of the page
• Re-worked layout of Web Portal upgrades and power commands page
• Web Portal fixes and improvements for smaller displayed devices (mobile)
• Sensor Checkin enhancements
  • Added additional options for what to send
  • Improved Sensor Checkin view pages
    • Added setting for how many checkins to show on main page
• MQTT Subscriber Web Portal Improvements
  • Added setting for how many Sensor Posts to show on main page
• Re-wrote Sensor Reports
  • Improved responce times
  • Simplify the back end
  • Changed visuals
  • Combo report top menu now remains visable at the top of the page
    • Added link to change Theme and return to top of the page
  • Added additional System & Configuration settings
  • Reports now show sensors that are in the list but Offline
• Added Automatic Upgrades (Disabled by default)
• Updated some sensor python modules (drivers)
• Misc. Minor bugfixes

A lot of the updates revolve around improving the Web Portal user experience. This is especially true for mobile devices. For one, you can now scroll the left main menu if your screen can’t show all the items.

The report generation has also gone through a major overhaul. The HTML code for each sensor entry is now generated on the remote sensor instead of the sensor generating the report. There are obvious speed enhancements with the new approach since the report generating sensor no longer has to get every configuration and multiple other sensor variables through HTTPS requests, and after that, still make the single sensors section and the actual report. It just takes one request to get the sensors section and add it into the main report (and a few other requests to test login/latency). The back-end has also been greatly simplified with this approach, as it’s a normal flask render_template() for each sensor report section.

The next neat addition is the new automatic software upgrade function. It’s pretty much exactly what you think it would be, you set an interval to check for updates, choose what version level you want to auto-update to, and save. You can set the auto-upgrade level to the following.

• Stable Major Upgrades
  • Upgrades to new Major stable versions (Ex. Beta.32.xx –> Beta.33.xx)
• Stable Minor Upgrades
  • Upgrades to new Minor stable versions (Ex. Beta.32.12 –> Beta.32.14)
• Developmental Upgrades
  • Upgrades to any new Developmental versions (Ex. Beta.32.12 –> Beta.32.14 or Beta.32.xx –> Beta.33.xx or Beta.32.12 –> 1.0.1)

That covers most of the changes. I’ll try and remember to update this more often.

Until next time!