Q4 2025 Release Notes

October - December 2025


Highlights

This quarter focuses on mobile/tablet experience and reliability improvements with 141 commits. Key achievements:

  • Health page overhaul - from minutes to seconds with server-side pagination
  • Major mobile and tablet UI overhaul with dedicated stylesheets
  • Enhanced TetherBox health monitoring with comprehensive diagnostics
  • Live View player reliability improvements for iOS/Safari
  • Network interface diagnostics with error tracking
  • Auto-retry system for video playback in fullscreen

User-Visible Changes

Text-Based Events ⭐

New event type for system notifications without video

Events can now be purely text-based, displaying system information directly in the event timeline without requiring camera footage. This enables proper tracking of:

  • Storage ejected/inserted events
  • TetherBox offline/online status changes
  • System alerts and notifications

Health Page Overhaul ⭐

Dramatically faster performance for large installations

The Health page has been completely rebuilt with server-side pagination. For integrators managing many sites: The page now loads in seconds instead of minutes. Each table (TetherBoxes, cameras, drives, etc.) loads independently, so you can start working immediately without waiting for everything to load.

  • Server-side pagination for all health tables
  • Each section loads independently
  • Instant filtering and sorting
  • No more browser freezes on large datasets

TetherBox Health Monitoring Enhancements ⭐

Comprehensive system health visibility improvements

For Facility Managers: - Clearer health status with actionable warnings - Proactive alerts for storage issues - MQTT heartbeat monitoring with staleness indicators - Full drive warnings with escalated status levels - "Unknown" status for TetherBoxes that have never connected

For Integrators: - CPU architecture visibility (x86-64-v4, v3, v2, ARMv8.2-A, ARMv8) - Network interface diagnostics (RX/TX errors, dropped packets) - Stress test results in readable format - Filesystem corruption detection with data loss risk alerts

New Diagnostic Features

  • Ejected Drives Detection: Critical alert when drives stop responding
  • IO Wait Monitoring: Warnings for disk performance issues
  • Slow Rotation Drive Warnings: Detection of sub-5400 RPM drives
  • LAN Interface Error Tracking: Cable status, link speed, carrier detection

Mobile & Tablet Experience ⭐

Major UI overhaul for mobile and tablet devices

Mobile-Optimised Layouts: - Dedicated layouts for live view, recordings, and user management - Touch-friendly controls throughout - Collapsible sidebar for more screen space - Bootstrap components optimised for touch interaction

Mobile Recordings View: - Dedicated mobile layout for recordings playback - Touch-friendly scrubbing and controls - Automatic layout switching when rotating device - Optimised controls for small screens

General Mobile Improvements: - Automatic mobile layout on phones and small tablets - Smooth handling when rotating device - Touch gestures throughout the platform - Better positioned help button on mobile - Improved bottom menu visibility

Live View Player Reliability ⭐

Improved stability on all platforms

Error Handling: - Specific error messages based on HTTP status: - 404: "Camera not found" - 401: "No permission for remote live view" - 406: "Live view outside scheduled hours" - 502/503: "TetherBox is not responding" - Graceful abort handling during navigation/refresh - First image load optimisation

Auto-Retry System (New): - Infinite retries in fullscreen mode - Exponential backoff (2s initial, 10s max) - Loading state during retry - Automatic recovery from temporary failures

iOS/Safari Improvements: - Native fullscreen prevention (WKWebView compatibility) - Autoplay in fullscreen mode - Pause recovery in fullscreen - Better object-fit styling

ANPR Whitelist/Blacklist Management

Inline plate management on camera pages

  • Whitelist and blacklist plates table directly on camera page
  • Add new plate form with group selection (whitelist/blacklist)
  • Expiry date support for temporary access
  • Last seen tracking
  • Server-side pagination

Camera Event Filtering

  • Always Ignore Events (New): Configure events to always ignore per camera
  • Complements existing "always notify" feature
  • Per-camera event type filtering

API Changes

New Zone Endpoints

Two new endpoints for live view player integration:

  • GET /zones/:id/zone_config - Full zone configuration including streaming URLs, camera capabilities, and TetherBox settings. Used for initializing live view players.
  • GET /zones/:id/state - Current zone state including camera status, online state, and error messages. Used for polling state updates.

See the API documentation for full details.


Other Changes

Application Layout Updates

  • TetherBox config simplified for faster page loads
  • Download link expiry time now displayed
  • Browser back/forward navigation now works reliably with dynamically loaded pages

Network Interface Improvements

  • Carrier detection (cable unplugged = "no-carrier")
  • VPN interface handling improvements
  • MAC address and vendor display
  • Link speed, MTU, driver information
  • Dynamic vs static IP indication

Subscription Dialog Modernisation

  • Unified confirmation dialog system replacing legacy modals
  • Cancellation confirmation dialog
  • Subscription update dialog with details
  • Better error handling and display

Page Performance ⭐

~2x faster page loads across key pages

  • Events, TetherBoxes, Cameras and other key pages load around twice as fast
  • Drastically reduced database queries
  • Lazy-loaded filters with temporary placeholders while loading
  • Page sections load independently for faster time-to-interactive

Real-Time Updates

  • More efficient real-time updates
  • Reduced unnecessary page refreshes

Internal Changes

Legacy ActionCable Cleanup

Removed legacy real-time update channels (sites, TetherBoxes, users, wireless). All functionality now handled by modern Stimulus controllers. For users: More reliable real-time updates with less browser memory usage.

Latency Tracking Improvements

  • More lenient stale threshold (10s → 30s) to reduce false warnings
  • More consistent latency display

Background Processing Improvements

  • Better handling of audit log sessions
  • Unified export cleanup (snapshots and event exports) with 7-day retention
  • Pending events automatically cleared after 3 minutes if stuck
  • Improved scheduled task reliability

Turbo Migration

  • Modernised delete confirmations throughout the platform
  • Consistent confirmation dialogs across all forms

Code Quality

  • Various bug fixes and code improvements
  • Better error logging throughout

Statistics

Metric Value
Commits 141
Lines added 23,660
Lines removed 11,895
Net change +11,765

Migration Notes

For Integrators

  1. Test mobile/tablet experience - major UI improvements
  2. Test live view on iOS - improved compatibility

For Facility Managers

  1. Review drive health alerts - new diagnostic features available
  2. Try mobile/tablet access - significantly improved experience
  3. Pending events auto-clear after 3 minutes if not processed