News and updates from the last months
Hey folks!
First of all, I wish everyone a happy, joyful and healthy New Year! Compared to last year, I have several very good reasons to believe that this will be a good year. But now to the actual blog post.
It’s almost embarrassing how neglected this blog is. After such a long period of silence, it’s time to catch up on all the news from the last few months. As always, please note: just because there is no current blog post, it does not mean that no progress is being made! To stay up to date, be sure to join Discord – then you won’t miss any news. If in doubt, just ask. :)
What I am currently working on?
There is actually quite a lot happening with the code base at the moment. There are a few areas I am currently working on. If anyone would like to help or contribute ideas, please get in touch on Discord.
Qt 6 Port
I am currently spending a lot of time porting the entire code base from Qt 5 to Qt 6. In some places, this has been much more work than I had anticipated, but it is a necessary step in order to continue maintaining the code base and adding new features. Qt 5 has been officially discontinued since 2023, which is why it was long overdue to eliminate this legacy issue.
The good news: most of the porting work has been completed, so there will probably be a major update in Q2 2026. I will keep you up to date on Discord (and sooner or later here on the blog as well).
At this point, I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to Pascal, who assisted me with the porting process.
Reimplementation of the machine control backend
The current implementation of the machine control system is stable, but has limitations in terms of expandability. In order to prepare the code base for new features, I am working on rewriting the whole module. This involves adding more abstraction layers and improving modularisation so that different machine types can be easier integrated into 2log - independently of power sockets.
The ultimate goal is to abstract the payment, logging and authorisation functionality via interfaces in such a way that they also work with custom implementations of proprietary machine APIs. This should make it possible in future to write plug-ins that integrate machines such as 3D printers directly via their native API instead of measuring their power consumption. However, this change is a major task, which is why it will take some time before the first new features based on it are released.
What else has happened?
In addition to the major construction sites, there are also a few minor changes and bug fixes that I would like to mention.
Firmware update for the 2log Dot
As part of the next release, there will also be a firmware update for the 2log-Dot. It turned out that there was a bug in the firmware that did not update status changes properly when the Wi-Fi connection is unreliable and the device was offline at the time of the update. Normally, the status should be synchronised when the Dot is reconnected, but unfortunately this is not currently happening. Further details about the update will be provided in the next release notes.
Group and machine permissions are now available without an expiry date
Since there has often been confusion in the past about the implied expiry date, I have modified the UI so that new authorisations do not have an expiry date from the beginning. This must be set explicitly now and can also be completely deactivated again.
Example showcases of 2log workshops
This website now includes illustrated examples of 2log workshops in the ‘Documentation’ section. Finally, you can see from concrete examples that 2log is more than just a pretty landing page with some git repositories. The images impressively show that 2log performs in everyday life on real machines with real users.
2log Community App no longer in Play Store
Some of you may have already noticed that the 2log app has disappeared from the Android Play Store. Unfortunately, due to an oversight on my part, Google has closed my developer account. Sadly, the criteria for submitting apps to the App Store have become much stricter since then, which is why I have not yet been able to resubmit the app. Once the port to Qt 6 is complete, I will revisit the issue.
Until then, the APK can be downloaded directly from the GitLab CI pipeline or here. If you have any trouble finding it, just ask in Discord.