Release FrameOS 2026.9.4 · FrameOS/frameos

New features

ESP32 self-hosted flashing now uses the same signed stock release images as FrameOS Cloud, selected for the board’s chip and flash layout, instead of building per-frame firmware on the backend.
ESP32 frames can now receive release OTA manifests and app images through a self-hosted backend, with the device verifying the signed release image before installing it.
ESP32 frames now poll a live settings endpoint for frame name, refresh interval, rotation, power/deep-sleep settings, time zone, schedule, HTTPS/admin credentials, and scene service settings, reducing the need to reflash for configuration changes.
Buildroot SD images now run the FrameOS runtime as an unprivileged frameos user, with root access limited to specific privileged helper actions.
Composed Raspberry Pi SD cards now include resolver/network drop-ins during image creation, so first boot has the intended network configuration available earlier.

New Buildroot SD cards now run first-boot display driver setup from the installed release directory with the correct frame.json, fixing cases where panel overlays were not applied until rerunning setup from the portal.
Buildroot cloud-enrollment state written on first boot is now readable by the unprivileged FrameOS runtime, fixing enrollment on images that run as the frameos user.
The FrameOS runtime is now always stamped with the release version, fixing frames that installed an update but reported the previous version and kept being offered the same update again.
ESP32 OTA on self-hosted backends now serves the bare -app.bin OTA image for the device’s layout, not the merged flashing image, avoiding invalid OTA payloads.
ESP32 boot logs now update the admin UI’s last successful deploy snapshot when a frame boots into a newer firmware version, while plain reboots on the same version no longer look like new deploys.
Composed SD card generation now writes its temporary user-merge files outside the read-only service root, fixing failures in locked-down/self-hosted composer environments.

The self-hosted Docker image no longer carries the full ESP-IDF toolchain at runtime; ESP32 firmware is consumed as release assets instead of being built inside the backend container.
Buildroot base image manifests were refreshed for Raspberry Pi 32-bit, Raspberry Pi 64-bit, and Raspberry Pi 5 images.
Added test coverage for ESP32 release flashing, OTA manifests, firmware asset selection, Buildroot privilege setup, and SD image composition.
Documentation and manual bench-test notes were updated for the Buildroot privilege model and recent SD-card behavior.

ESP32 flashing from FrameOS Cloud now selects the image that matches the board’s flash layout.
Cloud provisioning is more tolerant of boards running older firmware.