Sideband β 0.4.2

Maintenance Release
This release includes a number of bugfixes and minor improvements, primarily for the Android version of Sideband.

Changes

• Added ability to change at runtime whether Sideband should connect to RNodes over Bluetooth
• Improved RNode hotplug support over Bluetooth and USB
• Improved automatic announce logic
• Minor UI tweaks and improvements
• Added option to enable debug logging

Sideband β 0.4.1

Maintenance Release
This release includes a number of bugfixes and minor improvements, primarily for the Android version of Sideband.

Changes

• Fix a bug that could cause a crash when viewing the RNode hardware screen on the first launch of the application
• Added error message to the user in case of background service crash
• Added error message on USB control connection errors
• Fixed a bug that caused Bluetooth activation and pairing mode for RNode over USB to not work in some cases

Sideband β 0.4.0

The "Good Old Paper" Release
This release brings the new LXMF paper message functionality to Sideband, and greatly improves UI performance and usability on many Android devices. This release also fixes Bluetooth functionality on Android devices running Android 7 through 10, and makes it easier to set up RNodes for Bluetooth connectivity on all versions.

With the LXMF paper messaging functionality, you can output messages as encrypted QR-codes and transport them on paper or digitally. Messages can even be encoded as lxm:// links, that can be embedded anywhere, and Sideband will respond to and decrypt these links as messages.

Changes

• Added paper message functionality
• Greatly improved overall UI responsiveness
• Added pagination to messages in conversations
• Added support for Bluetooth-connected RNodes on Android versions 7 to 10 (11, 12 & 13 already supported)
• Added ability to control bluetooth settings on RNode devices that were connected over USB after Sideband was started
• Improved conversation list performance
• Improved connectivity status formatting
• Various UI layout tweaks
• Implemented a caching layer for mitigating slow SQLite reads on some Android devices
• Disabled Kivy multitouch emulation on desktop
• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused conversations to be scrolled to an incorrect position on loading

Sideband β 0.3.0

The "Hello Great Outdoors" Release
This is a massive release of Sideband, and one I've been looking forward to bringing you all for a long time. So much work went into all the behind-the-scenes stuff, especially regarding the RNode firmware and related tools, to make this possible.

Sideband is now more useful than ever when out and about, since you can now connect RNodes wirelessly to Sideband over Bluetooth. Sideband also features handy controls to configure the Bluetooth state of your RNodes.

Required RNode Version
You must update your RNodes to at least firmware version 1.52. This is easier than ever with the much improved rnodeconf utility, which is now found directly in the rns package. If you already have Reticulum installed on your system, you also have rnodeconf, and you can update your devices by connecting it and running rnodeconf /dev/ttyUSB0 --update.

Bluetooth Setup
When setting up an RNode for the first time, connect it with a USB cable initially, and put it into pairing mode via the RNode section in the Hardware screen of the program. You can then pair the RNode from the Bluetooth settings of your Android device. The RNode will display the pairing code on it's display, if it has one. After the devices are paired, Sideband can automatically connect to your RNode when it is in range.

Support For More Devices
Sideband is now build to target Android 7.0 and up, and includes binaries for both 64- and 32-bit ARM processors. This greatly expands the number of devices that Sideband can be used on.

Changes

• Added full support for connecting to RNodes over Bluetooth
• Added ability to control Bluetooth settings of connected RNodes
• Added ability to put connected RNodes into Bluetooth Pairing mode
• Added support for Android devices on 32-bit ARM SoCs
• Added support for Android 7.0 (API level 24)
• Added better I2P status to connectivity dialog
• Added Identity hash display to preferences screen
• Added showing Sideband logo on connected RNode displays
• Added dialog displaying any RNode hardware errors on startup if any occurred
• Added continously updating status in connectivity dialog
• Restructured connectivity page to work around a KivyMD rendering bug
• Fixed cross-platform graphics paths not working on some platforms
• Fixed orientation lock not being obeyed on Android
• Fixed a missing OS check for Android-specific code
• Fixed a missing settings field update
• Fixed sub-hardware screens not closing properly

Sideband β 0.2.5

This release expands configurability of Reticulum Transport, fixes a few bugs, and adds various small improvements to the user interface.

Changes

• Added ability to change interface modes when Transport is enabled
• Added traffic stats to connectivity status
• Added utilised network device info to local interface connectivity status
• Improved message formatting for small screen devices
• Improved announce stream display
• Improved UI consistency
• Improved shutdown and exit behaviour on Android
• Improved screen switching performance
• Fixed service-loader crash on Android devices with multiple user profiles
• Fixed a potentially missing configuration key on migrated config files

Sideband β 0.2.4

This release brings broader hardware support on Android, and the ability to use Android devices as basic Reticulum Transport Instances. This makes it possible to create LoRa or radio based access points with only an Android device.

Changes

• Added ability to use packet radio modems directly from Sideband on Android
• Added ability to use serial port devices directly from Sideband on Android
• Added ability to use Sideband as a Reticulum Transport Instance on Android

The Android APK for this release was updated on 2022-10-16 22:30 UTC due to a bug in the initial APK

Sideband β 0.2.3

This release brings a major, and long-awaited upgrade to Sideband: It is now possible to use RNodes connected directly over USB on Android devices. The UI has also been significantly improved in terms of consistency and responsiveness.

Changes

• Added support for interacting with USB devices
• Added RNode support over USB
• Added hardware configuration screen
• Added ability to export and import sharable hardware configs
• Improved UI style and consistency
• Improved UI performance and responsiveness
• Fixed various minor UI bugs

Sideband β 0.2.2

This release primarily improves the user interface responsiveness and performance, but also adds a few convenient features and bugfixes.

Changes

• Added ability to copy addresses from conversations list
• Added ability to copy addresses from announce stream
• Added settings item for notifications
• Added option and settings for periodic LXMF sync
• Added shutdown screen when app is closing Reticulum
• Improved UI performance throughout the app
• Improved dialogs throughout the app
• Improved announce handling
• Disabled superflous UI effects
• Fixed OpenGL shaders causing crashes on some Adreno GPUs
• Fixed guide text not rendering on devices with small texture buffers
• Fixed a bug that caused incorrect rendering of dialog boxes

Sideband β 0.2.1

This minor update to Sideband improves the user interface responsiveness, and brings RNS and LXMF up to date.

Changes

• Updated RNS to 0.3.14 and LXMF to 0.2.0
• Improved UI performance
• Improved notification logic on desktop

Sideband β 0.2.0

I have really been looking forward to bringing you all this major update to Sideband. There's lots of improvements and fixes on both Android and desktop, so without further ado, here is the changelog. With this release, Sideband becomes much more accessible and useful for general use.

Changes

• Added persistent background service on Android
• Added notifications on Android and desktop
• Added ability to export and import LXMF identity keys
• Added Light/dark theme support
• Added full macOS support via pip
• Added build system for macOS application
• Significantly improved user interface
• Significantly improved backend for message and network handling
• Improved install and start on Linux
• Improved guide section
• Improved settings section
• Improved startup when TCP peer is unreachable
• Added preliminary USB support on Android
• Implemented app lifecycle management on Android
• Improved data persistence
• Added verbose logging output mode on desktop
• Added proper Android versioning codes
• Updated included RNS to 0.3.13 and LXMF to 0.1.9