octacam 0.3.1

Added

• Update notice — octacam doctor and a dismissible GUI banner tell you when
  a newer release is available on PyPI and print the correct upgrade command for
  your install (pip / uv tool / pipx / conda). Read-only and fail-silent: octacam
  never updates itself, and the check is disabled by OCTACAM_NO_UPDATE_CHECK or
  DO_NOT_TRACK. Stays silent until octacam is published to PyPI.
• MIT license — octacam now ships a LICENSE file (MIT, matching SeptaCam)
  and declares it in the package metadata alongside trove classifiers and project
  URLs.

Changed

• Compacter octacam doctor — the camera list now collapses same-model
  cameras onto one line (acA1920-150um: 40018619, 40018631, …) in both the
  per-backend list and the cascade selection, and every backend (not just Basler)
  labels its cameras with the model name, read without opening the device (from
  the transport-layer node map for flir/spinnaker, or the device descriptor for
  basler/pycameleon). Dropped two low-signal lines (the "GUI port is free" happy
  path and the NVENC save_method how-to hint). The flir-unavailable message
  now says plainly that only the PySpin wheel is missing (often pruned by
  uv sync) and that the ctypes spinnaker tier still serves FLIR cameras.

Install this release:

uv tool install --force git+https://github.com/NeLy-EPFL/octacam.git@v0.3.1

octacam 0.3.0

The 0.3.0 line is a large step beyond 0.2: octacam gains a multi-vendor camera
backend cascade, trigger-hardware plugins, a frame-rate benchmark, GPU encoding,
one-command post-processing, and a much richer web GUI.

Added

• Backend cascade — backend = "auto" resolves each camera to the highest
  available tier: basler (pypylon) → flir (Spinnaker/PySpin) → spinnaker
  (libSpinnaker_C via ctypes) → pycameleon (libusb floor, always present).
  Multiple backends run at once; sensor params persist as native GenApi TSV
  (.txt), so a rig can switch flir↔spinnaker on shared param files.
• triggerbox plugin — drives the EPFL common-trigger-circuit (Arduino Nano
  ESP32): self-describing wire protocol v2, three symmetric light channels, and
  server-side auto strobe duty; auto-recovers a wedged USB CDC link.
• Arduino firmware auto-flash — per-plugin source-hash fingerprinting and
  one-command flashing (octacam flash) via arduino-cli.
• Benchmark / diagnostics (octacam benchmark + a GUI tab) — measures grab,
  encode, and end-to-end ceilings and names the bottleneck.
• Post-processing (octacam process) — transcode, tile into grid videos,
  and mirror to storage, driven by a per-recording config snapshot.
• CLI — doctor (install/rig diagnosis; never opens a camera), config
  (interactive rig scaffold), Rich-styled help, and a rig instance-lock.
• Web GUI — adaptive per-client preview (adaptive resolution, sharp
  maximize, scroll-zoom, server-side crop of the zoomed region), a full
  Camera-tab GenApi node-map browser, plugin tabs in a responsive overflow menu,
  a configurable colour theme, and keyboard shortcuts with a ? help overlay.
• GPU encoding — opt-in NVIDIA NVENC H.264, with the session cap
  auto-detected and overflow falling back to CPU encoding.
• Recording — per-frame timestamps in one timestamps.npz; a configurable
  writer queue depth (record.writer_queue_size, default 64); and a
  trigger-source model (software / managed / external) mirrored in the live
  preview.

Changed

• octacam.__version__ is single-sourced from the installed package metadata.
• FLIR DeviceLinkThroughputLimit is raised to max at open, and
  TriggerOverlap=ReadOut is set best-effort in every backend to lift the
  software-trigger frame rate.
• Every backend restores the config trigger source on save, so a preview's
  software trigger is never baked into a param file.
• Every grab loop is capped at round(fps × duration) frames so all cameras
  stop at the same count.

Fixed

• Hardened teardown and error paths across the recording pipeline (dozens of
  verified robustness fixes); every camera now captures the same frame count.
• Stopped Spinnaker/GenTL teardown crashes — the spinnaker ctypes tier exists
  specifically to avoid the Spinnaker GenTL producer's GIL-holding DevClose.

Removed

• The GenTL/harvesters backend and the mvIMPACT path — the always-present
  libusb pycameleon floor covers the general GenICam-USB3 camera without a
  vendor producer or EULA.