Grace Link Update 3-28-22

Note:  To access expanded presets from the remote control, press and hold the OK button

3-28-22

Release software  Grace Link V150.110. and V150.151 

• Audacy: Enhanced album artwork quality
• Pandora: improved playback on congested networks, enhanced long station list viewing, improved credentials management  
• Bug fix for playback of podcast and other content via the history menu
• Bug fix for non-password protected networks  
• Support for legacy WEP removed due to WEP security issues
• Network Properties updated when viewed in router logs
• Multi-room volume control improvements
• Other enhancements and improvements

11-19-21

We just released upgrade 150.101 for the Grace Link.  The new upgrade has some nice new features and bug fixes:

1. History Folder: At the top of the History folder we added the ability to delete your history. Select ‘clear history’
2. Presets: The radio will now remember your previous location in the 100 preset menu for quicker access
3. Wi-Fi passwords: Added the ability to save passwords for up to 10 wi-fi networks
4. Wi-Fi router list: The list is now sorted in order of strongest network at top (previously the sort was alphanumeric).
5. Auto play from standby:  If you prefer your radio to not automatically play music when the power button is pressed, you can turn that feature off in the settings menus
6. Podcast Fast forward and rewind: increased the time from 24 minutes to 99 minutes.
7. Bluetooth connectivity: Improved Bluetooth device connectivity and ability to turn off auto connect and scanning for devices.
8. High res playback: improved playback
9. Multi-room: enhanced multi-room playback
10. Chromecast: Upgraded to latest Google firmware. Also added ability to not share your data with google.
11. SSL certificate: Upgraded to latest certificate to be able to stream radio stations with old certificates
12. GUI: Upgraded search icons and various alarm icons to match the new look released last month.

We are still doing some server work to optimize Podcast playback for a few formats saved in the my stuff folder that don’t work. In the meantime don’t forget to check out our podcast app in the music service folder which is connected to Apple’s large podcast library.  

10-6-21

Software release:  Grace Link: 150.90
1) Updated the search function for the USA stations internet radio folders, deleted zip code search ( which never worked well anyway) and added the option to search by city and state.
2) New home screen icons to add a touch of color ( you can go into display settings and select the old ones, select Classic in the Home screen menu)
3) UPnP album artwork compatibility improvement
4) Preset bug where you would see as example ‘Pi:P13 station name’ in the saved preset
5) Pandora: only 50 stations displayed in stations list. This has been resolved and all stations are now displayed
6) Added the ability to stop Bluetooth discovery and change other BT items in the background
7) When radio has an internet connection issue and you select a preset that has a stored station you get the message: preset not stored. That old message was confusing, now it shows: Internet not connected please try again
8) Upgraded SSH security

5-13-21 Grace Link update:

The new software version is 150.76. Please see new features/ bug fixes below:

1. Preset feature upgrade to 100 presets: In addition to the 10 preset buttons on the radio, we added the ability to save 90 additional presets.  Depending on what type of audio you are listening to this feature is accessible in a few ways:

For standard internet radio stations the new preset button is on the bottom right hand softkey of the Now Playing screen. For premium services like Pandora, SiriusXM and UPnP the bottom softkeys are already used. So for premium service when on the Now Playing screen press the Now Playing button on the radio and it will pull up a new screen, on this screen it will show additional song information (when available) and adds a preset button on the bottom left of the screen. This opens up the preset menu.

• You can then scroll through the stations saved and either select to clear the preset or to save the currently playing station to any of the 1-100 preset locations available.
• To save a station to one of the 100 presets, on the Now Playing screen access the presets menu and then you will see the 100 preset list, scroll your cursor to the preset you want to save and select save to preset.  You can still use the 1-10 preset buttons on the radio to access or save 1-10 presets out of the 100 presets.  
• All 100 presets are saved on the radio, so they will continue to play in the event of a server outage. So now all of our premium services such as SiriusXM, iHeartRadio, Pandora as well as up to 100 saved presets work without server interaction.

1. Graphical interface: Upgraded Now Playing interface: moved elements around such as the time to the header and improved the volume and track time bars. Changed the select bar to dark black from blue to add more contrast when scrolling in long station list.
2. Alarms: We found some situations where the back up alarm was not working correctly, also when using Pandora as an alarm and fade in alarm option, the fade in alarm volume was not working. Both issues are remedied.   
3. SiriusXM/Pandora preset bug: In some instances when playing a SiriusXM channel or Pandora by pressing one of your presets, the artist and song name was shown incorrectly.  If you still see the issue after the upgrade please save the station again on the preset and this will resolve the metadata issue.  
4. Pandora: we upgraded the sort function in the My Collection folder. To check out this feature select ‘My Collection’ then select ‘Stations’ as example. Then when your stations are on the screen you have 4 options: Sort be recent, Sort by A-Z, and the sort order can be either Ascending or Descending.  Not all Pandora folders support sorting and different Pandora service levels have different folders.   There was also a bug when more than 1 Pandora station was saved on presets- both stations would be saved as the same station. If you had this issue please resave the Pandora station on the preset.  

• Pandora pause: when you paused Pandora for a few minutes then went back to play it would work but often stutter later in the playback and then skip to a new song after some time. We implemented a more graceful pause functionality.

1. New remote control feature: When playing Pandora or SiriusXM music and the radio is on the Now Playing screen, press and hold the OK button on the remote and a new enhanced menu will pop up for extra features, like thumbs up/down for Pandora, the ability to get to extra stations on SiriusXM as well as the new extended 100 preset menu is accessible this way. Check it out, its fun! We also added this feature when in the keyboard board and using your remote:
1. By using up / down arrows you are moving between the keys
2. By using OK you can add the letter you are staying on
3. By using left arrow you delete the last letter
4. By using right arrow you confirm in input value
5. By holding the OK button you can switch between keyboards (abc / ABC / special / num)
2. Radio periodic shut down:  Some customers were having issues when using other brands programmable remote control where long press volume commands would actually turn the radio off. The two main brands causing issue were Onkyo and Yamaha receiver remote controls.
3. My radios plus web portal: For our customers who use the enhanced features of the web portal, we fixed a bug where long list were not displayed on the radio completely. Now that we have the ability to save 100 presets on the radio the portal is not as essential except for the super users.
4. UPnP album artwork: Some customers reported that some album artwork was not displaying correctly for various content, this bug has been fixed.
5. UPnP menu: We have added fast forward and rewind on the main menu and moved shuffle and repeat to the new extended menu i.e. Long press of OK on the remote or press Now playing button on the radio when on the Now playing screen during UPnP file playback. Note: Not all UPnP media players provide time stamps, so FWD/RWD function will not work in those situations.
6. FLAC files: We had a few issues with some flac file formats, this has been resolved.
7. New IOS apps and Android apps: were released to fix various bugs / add some feature. For those who haven’t updated the apps in awhile check out your app store and update the latest app. However, please note there are still some significant issues with the latest apps, so the guys are working on upgrading them.
8. Snooze / sleep timer: Upgraded the function / fixed a few bugs, most notable feature was adding the ability to select preset 1-10 during sleep timer mode.   Also added the ability to use the sleep timer option via the remote for the Grace link.
9. BBC: we updated the audio streams in our database. This update supports all Grace elite, Link,  and plus model radios.
10. Google Chromecast audio: updated to version 1.52.246654. There were not many improvements made with this update, however, Google requires we update periodically. 
11. Podcast: When a podcast RSS feed had a expired TLS certificate (which are a lot of them) we were unable to play the file. We now accept bad/expired TLS certificates and will play the file.  Additionally, we improved our ability to parse additional types of RSS feeds.  Improved podcast FWD/RWD function. Note: Not all podcast feeds provide time stamps, so FWD/RWD function will not work on those streams.  We are still updating the podcast parser so there are still a few podcast versions that are not playable.  So we will add additional interoperability in a future date.
12. Cyrillic characters: Added ability to support Cyrillic alphabet ( if you don’t know what that is, then it won’t enhance your enjoyment of the radio 😊)
13. Changed name of Radio.com in audio services folder: formally known as CBS radio and Entercom to Audacy, the new company name and radio station brand.
14. Wi-fi: Improved the accuracy of the wi-fi indicator as well as made some improvements to wi-fi connectivity.

We have released a new version of software:

Mondo Elite / Mondo Elite Classic:  143.118,  Grace Link: 150.49

Upgrades / Bug fixes are as follows:

1. Fixes mute bug on Grace link ( press in the select knob when on the Now playing screen will mute / unmute audio)
2. Increase number of alarms from 5 to 7
3. enhances the Pandora log in process to make sure the activation code does not get deactivated before initial service set up
4. added more information during alarm set up process
5. upgrade font as it was not rendering correctly on some screens
6. optimized extra Now playing screen ( press now playing button when on now playing screen provides various information depending on what is provided
7. wi-fi connectivity for WPA networks: a small percentage of customers had issues connecting to network with PMF supported (this is not a customer setting but a new feature many modems enable for better security).  
8. SirisuXM upgrade: adds more functionality to the remote control
1. By holding OK button ON THE REMOTE CONTROL, the bottom bar items (except items which have dedicated buttons - play / skip etc.) are displayed as a list invoked from any list / play view

Note: We have a few other SirisuXM bugs that are effecting metadata and we will also be updating our Chromecast implementation as well as a few other upgrades. We expect the next upgrade to be within 2 weeks.