Software/Firmware Updates

[jimilee]

Version 5.0.0

Support for the new Solderless Q-Tune

Small Improvement to the Needle Tuner
The triangle "in-tune" indicators now show up on all custom colors and not just the main default color.

Is this the only update?

 

[joulupukki]

Is this the only update?

Yeah, definitely not a necessity to update to it unless those little triangles on the needle tuner really bug you that they're not there with a custom color. Otherwise, you can skip it. Mostly I wanted to just make people aware, in case they stumbled across it.

 

[jimilee]

Yeah, definitely not a necessity to update to it unless those little triangles on the needle tuner really bug you that they're not there with a custom color. Otherwise, you can skip it. Mostly I wanted to just make people aware, in case they stumbled across it.

Awesome, thank you.

 

[joulupukki]

Version 5.1.0

Now available at https://www.q-tune.com/install

New Features

• Custom UI Plugins - Q-Tune is now open for tinkering!
  
  You can now install custom tuner screens and standby screens onto Q-Tune, built by the community (or by you). Plugins drop right into Q-Tune and show up in your settings menus alongside the built-in screens.
  
  There are two kinds of plugins: active tuner styles and standby/screensaver screens.
  
  Install, enable, disable, and remove plugins using USB Drive mode or use the built-in Wi-Fi server and open the new Plugins page from your web browser.
  
  Plugins are sandboxed and crash-safe: if a plugin misbehaves, Q-Tune automatically falls back to a built-in screen and sets the troublemaker aside so your tuner always keeps working.
  
  
• NEW Q-Tune SDK - build and share your own tuners and standby screens
  
  We've released a free, open-source SDK so anyone can create plugins for Q-Tune:
  
  https://github.com/joulupukki/q-tune-sdk
  
  No toolchain to install. Everything builds inside Docker, so you don't need to set up a full embedded development environment. There are two ways to build: scaffold a C++ project: the classic way, or use Claude Code to help you create a plugin with little-to-no coding.
  
  There are five complete examples to learn from and remix: Gauge and Phase (tuner displays), plus Bouncer, Hyperdrive, and Jamagotchi (standby screens, including one with its own persistent state).
  
  Each frame, your plugin receives the detected note, how sharp/flat it is, and the user's settings. You can use this to draw anything you can imagine on the 240×320 screen, in portrait or landscape, with touch support.
  
  It's Apache-2.0 licensed, so you're free to build, share, and even sell your own plugins.
  
  
• Developer Tools menu - A new Settings > Advanced > Developer Tools > Test Signal option meant for developers to see sample tuning data without plugging in a guitar. It's off by default.

Here's a quick preview of the plugins currently bundled with the SDK:

 

[joulupukki]

Version 5.1.2

Now available at https://www.q-tune.com/install

This is a bug-fix and hardware-compatibility release on top of 5.1.0. (There was no public 5.1.1.) If your Q-Tune has been working fine, this mostly just makes sure it keeps working on every chip out there, but there's one new setting worth knowing about.

New Features

• Signal GPIO setting + Auto-detect (GPIO 10 / GPIO 18)
  There's a new option under Settings > Advanced > Signal GPIO that lets you pick which pin Q-Tune listens to for your guitar signal: GPIO 18 (ADC2, pin 11 on the 12-pin connector) or GPIO 10 (ADC1, pin 7, labeled "SCL"). The default Auto detect mode checks both pins at boot, figures out which one your preamp is actually feeding, and remembers it, so detection only runs once and then gets out of the way. Most of you won't need to touch this, but it's there if you do.
  
  For a deeper dive about GPIO 10 vs GPIO 18, see this post.
  
  
• Failsafe reading for GPIO 18
  Some ESP32-S3 may intermittently fail to run ADC in the fast continuous mode when using GPIO 18 (ADC2). This version of the firmware now uses a failsafe method if the normal initialization of ADC2 fails. It will switch to timed one-shot reading of GPIO 18 values to ensure that tuning still works.