Dave
It's finally time and we feel confident enough to hit that release button. So as promised, the current MoBro preview version is now publicly available to download from mobro.app. Please just keep in mind that this is still a preview version. While this version has been tested quite extensively by us as well as our Patreons, there might still be some bugs to iron out.
Now before we move on we would like to take the opportunity for a big THANK YOU to all our Patreons for supporting us throughout the development of this version. This would not have been possible without you guys continuously testing, reporting bugs, suggesting features and helping to lower our monthly service expenses.
We've now also updated our Patreon page to display the MoBro features for each tier according to the tier list we've adapted with your feedback.
Early Supporters
As promised, all of you guys with an active Patreon subscription as of today have been assigned to a special "Early supporter" tier. You have and will keep access to all features currently available in MoBro as long as you keep the subscription. So any restrictions from the tier list (such as metrics per dashboard, polling rate, ...) do not apply to you.
Developer documentation
We've also finally came around to create a proper documentation for developers on how to create plugins and widget packs. It is available over at developer.mobro.app
So in case you always wanted to create your own widget pack: Now you can!
If there's anything missing in the documentation, please let us know. We've also created a dedicated developer channel on our Discord server for all code related issues where we will try to help and answer your questions.
What's next?
So now that the new MoBro version is finally public, you might ask yourself: What's next?
Well, we've actually already got a lot of ideas in mind. Ranging from small improvements to completely new features and additions to MoBro. We would like to lay out those ideas here and hope to get some feedback from you guys. Just so we can get a feel for which of those topics/ideas are important to you.
Marketplace
Currently the marketplace is only available in MoBro itself. We would like to make it accessible via mobro.app as well, kind of similar to the Steam store. In order to make the marketplace more interactive, we also want to add ratings for plugins and widget packs, the option to leave comments, etc. This also means that you will be able to login directly on mobro.app using your ModBros account.
Extended user profiles
Currently you only use your ModBros account to log into MoBro or our Forum. By extending the marketplace with ratings, comments, etc. your user profile will also become more visible. Therefore we would like to drastically extend the user profiles to increase community interactions on the platform. One thing we thought of was adding badges. Similar to the Patreon badges currently available in the Forum, but more diverse. E.g. an "early supporter" badge for all of you current Patrons so it's clearly visible that you guys were with us from the beginning. Or maybe allow you to share your PC setup, dashboard configurations,... with others. If you have more ideas: please comment down below!
Sharable dashboard configurations
While our new dashboard builder is very powerful, there is also one big issue: It can easily get overwhelming for people not used to such editors. Starting a dashboard from a blank canvas just isn't for everyone. You can already export and import dashboard configurations. So we thought it would make sense to just enable you guys to share your dashboard configurations via the marketplace. This would greatly ease the creation of dashboards for new users, as they would be able to pick from a variety of existing configurations to start from and just modify it to their liking if they want to further personalize it.
Actions
Now this is one of the big new features we've been thinking of and discussing a lot already: What if you could add interactive elements to your dashboards as well? Like a button to launch a program for example. Or a slider to control the system volume.
We haven't thought about all the details yet, but this could replace your streaming controller, enhance third party plugins and even enable game or smart home integrations.
Dashboard pages
Some of you already suggested the feature of having multiple "pages" of a dashboard that it automatically cycles through. Or having the option to manually switch between the pages.
As an example: There's one general page including metrics such as finances, weather, etc. and a dedicated gaming page that you switch to when starting a game that includes metrics like FPS, temperatures, etc.
Revamped Raspberry Pi setup
We would like to tightly integrate our Raspberry Pi image into MoBro. This would start with more details on the dashboard card, like CPU and memory usage of the Pi. Or allowing to change certain settings like the display driver, screensaver, etc. directly via MoBro without having to switch to the Pis configuration page.
We've also thought about a new guided approach to flashing the SD card and directly including a first configuration.
Revamped Android app
We haven't updated our Android app in a long time. So we would completely rebuild and re-design the app from the ground up with the main focus being on MoBro. This would also allow you to log in with your ModBros account.
Linux support
MoBro currently only runs on Windows. But support for Linux has been brought up a few times already, so we kept that in mind while working on this new MoBro version. Therefore there's no major technical hurdle preventing us from supporting Linux. Well, in theory at least.. This would probably still take quite some work as we didn't test on Linux yet at all. And then there's the issue with most plugins being Windows exclusive, like HWiNFO, Aida64, etc...
Monitor any PC on your network
Currently MoBro can only monitor the PC it is installed on. But our architecture is already designed in a way that would allow us remove that requirement. Maybe you want to have MoBro installed on your main PC, but actually put metrics on your dashboard from another PC on your local network or monitor a server.
More widget packs and plugins
Obviously we will also be working on more plugins and widget packs to give you even more metrics and customization options for your dashboards.
It's been an eventful year for us and we've achieved quite a lot with MoBro. We hope you continue with us on this journey!