Escape Pod 1.8.0

According to the official DDL Escape Pod page a new version is available. The version jump is immense, from 1.0.0 to 1.8.0. I see nothing in the changelog that would warrant such a big version jump, but strange and incomprehensible things like these are normal with DDL, as we know from past experiences. The info reads like this:

Escape Pod 1.8.0:

Currently in beta, release expected on or before Mar. 18, 2022.

• New Features:
  • Added compatibility for Vector software version 1.8.1.
  • New “About” screen and tooltips which will speed troubleshooting and provide valuable version and system info
  • New “Hide Vector Status” option to declutter the UI in the Onboarding screen.
  • Historical logs are now stored on the Pod for analysis later rather than being immediately discarded after download
  • New ways to engage and control the terminal for those more comfortable with working with a terminal/command line environment:
    • New command for the terminal emulator: termctl ( full | half | closed ) that determines the visibility and size of the Onboarding terminal. This is significantly more intuitive and easier to use than only the “Alt+1”, “Alt+2”, or “Alt+3” key combinations.
    • New drop-down box on the Onboarding screen can also control the terminal size and visibility.
• Performance Fixes:
  • Changed from Deepspeech to Coqui STT voice model for improved speech-to-text accuracy
  • Escape Pod now uses 2 ports to communicate with Vector instead of 4-5.
  • The Escape Pod Interface is now able to be accessed via the Raspberry Pi’s IP Address as an alternative to the need for special networking protocols (mDNS is not always supported by every router, or some routers may remap the “.local” hostname)
  • Eliminated a memory leak that would cause memory usage to max out, slowing response times.
  • Large eliminations of technical debt and dependencies on databases and other software packages will allow easier deployment with Docker onto separate hardware from the Pi platform for advanced users (hardware must be Bluetooth-compatible)
  • Security and performance fixes to the underlying Ubuntu operating system.
• Bug fixes for the terminal
• Under-the-hood changes to prepare for compatibility with the Vector Robot app (Vector Robot app is currently undergoing development to enable this compatibility.)

As usual there is no information whatsoever on this page on how to download that beta, neither have I gotten any informations on how to get that beta, even if I am entitled to it by the Kickstarter campaign. Also usual behaviour for DDL.

I am trying to download the latest version from the download page, but since they are naming these downloads in an utterly noninformational way (not including the version number as I suggested months go), I cannot know if that is the beta version.  Also it will take quite some time to see if it is, because again DDL’s download servers are so incredibly bad that I only get download rates around 300 to 400 kBit/s on my 100 Mbit line.

And still you have to reinstall Escape Pod completely, there still is no update path from within the Linux, so you loose all settings and will have to onboard all your robots again.

Sigh.

Update: Do not bother to download the Escape Pod from the official site at this moment, it is not the new beta version!