With the v4.3.3 update, we're focused on refining the NSPanel's usability and customization capabilities, addressing user feedback to enhance the intuitive interaction with the panel.
From streamlining light entity controls to expanding text length for entities on the home page, each change is aimed at improving the user experience.
This patch also introduces experimental features, such as prebuilt firmware updates and PSRAM use, pushing the boundaries of what's possible with NSPanel,
while also ensuring a smoother, more reliable interface across different languages and configurations.
Simplified Light Entity Control on Custom Buttons (#1844)
- Criticality: Minor
- Affected Components: Blueprint
- Issue Number: #1844
- Description: Addressed an inconsistency where light entities with only on/off capabilities erroneously showed an extended screen with a brightness slider. This fix streamlines the control interface for such light entities, aligning with their actual capabilities.
Deletion of Button Icons from Home Page Enabled (#1992)
- Criticality: Minor
- Affected Components: Blueprint
- Issue Number: #1992
- Description: Resolved an issue preventing the removal of button icons from the home page. Users can now delete or change button icons as needed, providing flexibility in customizing the panel's appearance.
Correction of Missing Characters on Button Pages for Multi-Byte Languages (#2000)
- Criticality: Minor
- Affected Components: Blueprint, ESPHome, and TFT
- Issue Number: #2000
- Description: Resolved a display issue affecting multi-byte languages, where specific characters were missing on the button pages. This fix ensures complete and accurate representation of all languages across the NSPanel interface, including Hebrew and others where a character may occupy more than a single byte.
Entity Display Persistence on Home Page Addressed (#2018)
- Criticality: Minor
- Affected Components: Blueprint
- Issue Number: #2018
- Description: Fixed a bug where entities removed from the blueprint continued to display on the home page. This update ensures that the home page accurately reflects the current configuration, removing any unassigned entities.
Resolved Unintended Climate Control Page Access (#2021)
- Criticality: Minor
- Affected Components: Blueprint
- Issue Number: #2021
- Description: Fixed an issue where touching the temperature display on the home page erroneously opened the climate control page, even in the absence of configured climate entities. This update ensures that interactions with the temperature display are consistent with the available configurations, enhancing the intuitive use of the NSPanel.
Internal Temperature Reporting Fix After Sleep (#2030)
- Criticality: Minor
- Affected Components: Blueprint
- Issue Number: #2030
- Description: Resolved an issue where the internal temperature indicator disappeared for a few seconds upon waking the panel from sleep mode. This fix ensures the internal temperature, especially when sourced from the panel's internal sensor, remains consistently displayed without interruption when transitioning from sleep to the home page, enhancing the stability and reliability of environmental monitoring on the NSPanel.
Advanced Settings Page Entity Name Enhancement (#1909)
- Criticality: Enhancement
- Affected Components: Blueprint
- Issue Number: #1909
- Description: Improved the advanced settings page by providing clearer entity names when opened from a custom button, enhancing user navigation and configuration understanding within the NSPanel settings.
Support for mdi:void Icon on Homepage for Blank Display (#2019)
- Criticality: Enhancement
- Affected Components: Blueprint
- Issue Number: #2019
- Description: Implemented support for the
mdi:voidicon on the homepage, allowing for a blank display where no icon is preferred. This enhancement provides users with greater customization flexibility, enabling a cleaner and more minimalistic interface by opting not to show any icon.
Extended Text Length for Entities on Home Page (#2020)
- Criticality: Enhancement
- Affected Components: TFT
- Issue Number: #2020
- Description: Enhanced the home page by allowing for longer text for entities values. This improvement accommodates more detailed values, improving clarity and user understanding of displayed data and controls.
Timezone Selector Added to Blueprint
- Criticality: Enhancement
- Affected Components: Blueprint and ESPHome
- Description: Introduced a timezone selector within the Blueprint configuration, streamlining the setup process and enhancing user convenience. This addition simplifies the configuration of the NSPanel, significantly reducing the need for YAML customizations related to timezone settings. By providing a direct method to specify the timezone, this enhancement ensures that time displays and other time-sensitive features on the NSPanel accurately reflect the user's local time, contributing to a more personalized and accurate user experience.
Prebuilt Firmware Updates (#2024) - EXPERIMENTAL
- Criticality: Enhancement
- Affected Components: ESPHome
- Issue Number: #2024
- Description: The prebuilt firmware has been updated to incorporate the latest fixes and enhancements, ensuring users have access to the most current and stable version without the need for manual compilation. This is another important step in our goal torwards Simplifying User Experience for NSPanel Firmware, allowing users to directly download the firmware from GitHub without the need of compiling it locally.
- Special Thanks: To @MichaelHeimann for trimming this feature, fixing bugs and reviving this idea.
Use of PSRAM (#1815, #1946, and #1983) - EXPERIMENTAL
- Criticality: Enhancement
- Affected Components: ESPHome
- Issue Number: #1815, #1946, and #1983
- Description: We are introducing the use of PSRAM memory available on the NSPanel. This will possibly open space for additional features to be developed in the future and the use of more customizations for your panel.
- Special Thanks: To @Bascht74 and @olicooper for giving the directions to enable the use of non-standard pins for PSRAM used in NSPanel, and to @X-Ryl669 and @MichaelHeimann for all the tests, tips, and feedback around this.