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Vegas mode: reclaim dead space and pace the rotation (#423)

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* Vegas mode: reclaim dead space and pace the rotation

On a wide panel Vegas mode spent much of its time showing black. At 50px/s
on a 512px display, one display width of blank is 10.2 seconds, which makes
several long-standing behaviours expensive:

- ScrollHelper prepended a full display width of black as an "initial gap",
  charged once per cycle — 10.2s of black at the start of every rotation.
- Plugins without get_vegas_content() are captured off a full-display canvas,
  so their blank margins entered the ticker too. Measured: of-the-day drew
  35px of "No Data" on a 512px canvas (92% blank), youtube-stats 142px of
  content with 185px of black either side. Only the scroll_helper path had
  any trimming.
- Cycle transitions deliberately pushed a blank frame and then recomposed
  synchronously: 84ms at best, 4.8s at worst, every millisecond of it black.
- buffer_ahead doubled as the cycle size, so a 21-plugin install showed 3
  plugins per cycle and took ~7 cycles to come around.
- separator_width was applied between every image rather than at plugin
  boundaries, so a per-row ticker like the F1 scoreboard (116 images, which
  it renders 4px apart internally) got a 32px chasm between each row — and
  the width budget didn't count those gaps, so the plugin quietly occupied
  far more of the panel than intended.

Changes:

- src/vegas_mode/geometry.py: numpy column-ink primitives shared by the
  trimmer and the audit tool, so the number reported is the number acted on.
  A Python per-column loop over a 17,000px strip is far too slow for the
  render path.
- PluginAdapter trims every content path, not just scroll_helper. Only outer
  edges are cropped: interior blank columns are the plugin's own layout
  (logo left, score right) and closing them would corrupt the design. A
  plugin on a non-black background is inherently unaffected.
- ScrollHelper.create_scrolling_image takes an explicit lead_gap, still
  defaulting to display_width so the many standalone-ticker callers are
  unchanged. Vegas passes lead_in_width (default 0).
- Cycle end holds the last rendered frame instead of blanking, turning the
  recompose into a brief freeze rather than the panel switching off.
- plugins_per_cycle (default 6) is split from buffer_ahead, which goes back
  to being only a prefetch low-water mark.
- max_plugin_width_ratio (default 3x display width) caps one plugin's share
  of a cycle. Overflow is deferred, not discarded: a rotation offset advances
  each fetch so later rows appear on subsequent cycles. Single oversized
  images are cropped at a blank column so the cut misses glyphs.
- Composition groups images by plugin: rows are joined by intra_plugin_gap
  (default 8) and separator_width applies only between plugins. The width
  budget now counts those gaps.
- Plugin data updates no longer run on the Vegas render path.

All new settings are user-configurable in Display -> Vegas Scroll, including
min/max cycle duration and dynamic duration, which previously existed in code
but were reachable only by hand-editing config.json.

Measured with scripts/dev/vegas_audit.py on a 512x64 panel:

  mean ink coverage    42.7% -> 69.4%
  fully blank           5.9% -> 0%
  reads as empty        13.6% -> 0%
  worst blank stretch    4.8s -> 0s
  full rotation          414s -> 123s
  plugins per cycle         3 -> 6

Note the metric choice: a "fully blank" scan (>=95% black viewport) reported
only 0.4% and badly understated the problem, because two full-width segments
with mid-canvas content never fully blank the viewport — they hold it at ~28%.
window_coverage_stats grades every viewport position by how much ink it
carries, which is what tracks perceived dead time.

Known remaining: cycle transitions still freeze ~3.5s while the next cycle is
fetched. Fixing that needs background prefetch, which is deferred because the
fallback-capture path mutates the shared display_manager.image and racing it
against the render loop risks torn frames.

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KEZK1P1Q1fu5pcuVrkrCFZ

* Drop unused Optional import from the vegas audit script

Flagged by Codacy (F401). Any, Dict and List are all still used.

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KEZK1P1Q1fu5pcuVrkrCFZ

* Align Vegas API bounds with validate(), fix audit config plumbing

Both from review feedback on #423.

The web API's accepted ranges disagreed with VegasModeConfig.validate(),
which is what actually gates Vegas starting:

  scroll_speed      1-100  -> 1-200   (a slider value of 150 returned 400)
  separator_width   0-500  -> 0-128
  target_fps        1-200  -> 30-200
  buffer_ahead      1-20   -> 1-5

The three loose ones were the dangerous direction: the value saved with a
200, then VegasModeCoordinator.start() failed validation with only a log
line, so the ticker silently never ran. The UI already matched validate() in
all four cases, so the API was the odd one out.

test_vegas_api_bounds_match_validate parses the numeric_fields map out of
api_v3 and asserts every bound against validate(), plus that validate()
accepts both endpoints and rejects just outside them, so these cannot drift
apart again. That test immediately caught a missing upper bound on
min_plugin_width, now added — unbounded it would drop every segment and
leave a blank ticker.

Separately, vegas_audit.py constructed PluginAdapter without the config, so
it fell back to VegasModeConfig() defaults and would report trimming and
width-budget behaviour that differed from the user's config.json. It now
passes the loaded config exactly as the coordinator does. This is the same
class of drift the explicit lead_gap and grouping arguments already guard
against. Output is unchanged on a rig whose config matches the defaults.

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KEZK1P1Q1fu5pcuVrkrCFZ

* Vegas mode: render plugins narrower, space rows by measured separation

Trimming reclaims blank margins but cannot compact a layout that genuinely
spans the display — a five-column forecast, a progress bar drawn at 100%
width, a stat block with the panel's whole width between its elements. Those
need the plugin to make different layout decisions, which means telling it the
screen is narrower while it renders.

DisplayManager.render_size() presents a smaller logical canvas for the
duration of a Vegas content fetch, reusing the same _LogicalMatrix
indirection double-sided mode already relies on so plugins see a consistent
size from every accessor. Plugins that size themselves from matrix.width need
no changes at all; one that wants to be explicit can read the new
BasePlugin.get_vegas_render_width().

Width is a percentage so a single setting travels across panel sizes:
vegas_scroll.render_width_pct globally, or vegas_width_pct in an individual
plugin's config. Measured on a 512x64 panel with real data:

  ledmatrix-weather   1536px -> 576px   (forecast becomes narrow cards)
  youtube-stats        353px -> 199px   (2% blank left, so genuinely compact)
  geochron             453px -> 153px   (ink density rises to 100%)
  ledmatrix-flights    950px -> 740px

The youtube-stats figure is the clearest evidence the layout itself changed
rather than being cropped: at full width the content had to be trimmed from
512px to 353px, whereas at 40% it arrives with almost no blank to reclaim.

Row spacing is now measured rather than added. A flat gap gets it wrong in
both directions at once — content drawn flush to its own edges ends up nearly
touching (reported for recent sports scores, which sat 8px apart), while
content already carrying wide margins gets pushed even further out.
separation_gap() measures the blank each pair already has and adds only the
shortfall, up to min_content_separation (default 24). intra_plugin_gap stays
as a floor applied regardless.

Two tests shipped in the previous commit encoded the old flat-gap arithmetic
and are updated to the measured semantics, including one renamed to reflect
that zero intra_plugin_gap alone no longer butts rows together.

Also fixes a real bug found while testing: the harness display manager had no
render_size(), and because the adapter catches broadly that surfaced as "no
content" rather than an error, silently dropping five plugins. Added the
context to VisualTestDisplayManager for parity, and _render_at() now degrades
to a no-op on any display manager lacking it, so a third-party or older
harness loses the narrowing rather than the content.

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KEZK1P1Q1fu5pcuVrkrCFZ

* Vegas mode: end cycles before the wrap, keep the width budget honest

Three fixes, the first a regression from lead_in_width defaulting to 0.

get_visible_portion wraps: once scroll_position + display_width passes the end
of the strip it fills the right of the frame from the *head* of the same strip.
So the final display_width of travel showed the cycle's first plugin re-entering
on the right while its last plugin exited on the left, and the recompose that
followed replaced both at once. On a 512px panel at 50px/s that was 10.2s of
two plugins on screen at once, ending in a hard cut — reported as the ticker
"switching mid-scroll" from F1 to news.

That used to be invisible because the strip began with a full display_width of
blank, so the wrapped-in region was black. Removing that blank (it was 10s of
dead panel per cycle) exposed the wrap. Cycles now end one display width
earlier, before any wrapped content appears, clamped for strips no wider than
the display so they don't complete instantly and spin the recompose loop.

Verified on hardware: a 3936px strip now completes at 68.5s, exactly
(3936 - 512) / 50.

Second, auto_trim=False also skipped the width budget, which is an unrelated
concern — turning off margin cropping should not let one plugin hold the panel
for minutes. Seen in the field: the F1 scoreboard contributed 116 images and
14,848px untouched, giving a 33,821px cycle (11 minutes of content). The budget
now applies regardless of trimming; with it restored that cycle is 6,362px.

Third, the budget accounted for row gaps using the flat intra_plugin_gap while
the compositor had moved to measured separation, so it under-counted by up to
(min_content_separation - intra_plugin_gap) per row and a many-row plugin
overran its cap. Both now use the same separation_gap() rule, and a test
asserts the composed block fits the budget end to end rather than trusting the
two paths to agree.

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KEZK1P1Q1fu5pcuVrkrCFZ

* Fix IndexError in find_blank_cut when the cut lands on the image edge

A cut position after the last column is legitimate — _crop_to_budget asks for
min(start + budget, img.width), which equals the width whenever the remaining
strip is shorter than the budget. find_blank_cut clamped target to width but
then walked leftwards starting at target itself, so ink[width] raised
IndexError.

Caught on hardware: it killed the ledmatrix-stocks fetch, and because
_fetch_plugin_content catches broadly that surfaced as the plugin silently
contributing nothing for the cycle.

Only reachable on the second or later pass of the rotating window over a single
oversized image, which is why the existing tests missed it — they all exercised
the first pass, where start is 0 and start + budget is comfortably inside the
image. Added TestRotationAcrossMultipleCycles, which walks the window round
several times and asserts content is never lost, plus direct coverage of
find_blank_cut at and beyond the image edge.

Both bounds now stop at width - 1 so neither direction can index past the end.

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KEZK1P1Q1fu5pcuVrkrCFZ

* Only cut oversized segments at real gaps between items

The width-budget crop snapped to the nearest blank column, and in rendered text
the gap between two characters is a single column. So a cut routinely landed
inside a word: the cycle showed "Wednesda" and the orphaned "y" turned up as a
lone floating letter in the next cycle, positioned after whatever plugin
happened to precede it.

Measured on the clock-simple segment to confirm: its blank runs are
[1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 8, 8] — five single-column letter gaps, every one of which
find_blank_cut would happily have chosen.

Cuts now only land in a run of at least min_cut_gap blank columns (default 6),
which excludes letter spacing while still finding the gaps plugins put between
items (the stocks ticker uses 32px, baseball 48px). Where no boundary falls
inside the budget the cut waits for the next one and overruns, because
splitting an item is worse than a slightly long segment.

Continuous content is treated differently on purpose: an image with no internal
gaps is a map or a chart, where any column is as good as another, so it is still
cut to the budget exactly. The gap rule protects discrete items; letting a solid
image escape the cap in its name would be wrong.

blank_runs() is vectorised — 48ms for a 17,000px strip, against seconds for a
per-column Python loop.

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KEZK1P1Q1fu5pcuVrkrCFZ

* Hold capture_mode for every plugin render, not just narrowed ones

The native content path only entered capture_mode when it was also narrowing
the canvas, so at full width — which is every plugin without a vegas_width_pct
override, i.e. most of them — a plugin calling update_display() while building
its Vegas content wrote straight to the hardware. That is a visible flash
mid-scroll, and it lines up with the flash reported at cycle transitions, when
several plugins are fetched back to back.

Suppression is now unconditional; the narrowing context stays separate because
it is already a no-op at full width.

Both contexts are reached through helpers that degrade to nullcontext when the
display manager lacks them. That matters more than it looks: the adapter's
handlers are deliberately broad, so an AttributeError from a missing context
does not surface as an error — it surfaces as the plugin contributing nothing.
Making the call unconditional without this turned 44 tests red for exactly that
reason, all of them reporting lost content rather than the real cause.

The test double now provides capture_mode and render_size too, so tests
exercise the real contexts instead of silently taking the degraded path.

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KEZK1P1Q1fu5pcuVrkrCFZ

* Vegas mode: one continuous strip instead of swapping cycles

A cycle used to be a discrete strip that got replaced: motion stopped, every
pixel was substituted at once, and the next group started with the viewport
already full. That is the freeze, the flash and the jump.

The strip is now extended rather than replaced. ScrollHelper gains
append_content(), which adds items on the right without touching
scroll_position or total_distance_scrolled, so motion continues and the next
group simply arrives from the right. Because completion is measured against
total_scroll_width, extending also defers completion — there is no longer a
cycle boundary to see.

drop_scrolled_prefix() reclaims what has gone past, keeping the strip bounded
however long Vegas runs (observed 5,000-11,000px against an unbounded strip
otherwise). It shifts total_distance_scrolled and total_scroll_width together so
the completion arithmetic is unchanged, and refuses to run while the viewport is
wrapping: wrapping reads the head of the strip into the right of the frame, so
trimming the head there would visibly change the picture. A test caught that.

Groups are prepared off the render thread. The constraint is that the canvas and
the matrix proxy are process-wide mutable state, so narrowing or capturing
through them from another thread would corrupt the frame the render loop is
pushing. get_content() therefore takes offscreen_only: the background thread uses
only paths that avoid the canvas, and anything needing it is marked and picked up
on the render thread. That puts the expensive work (native renders of leaderboard
and baseball cards, seconds each) in the background and leaves the cheap work
(display capture, 40-600ms) in the foreground.

DisplayManager's capture flag is now thread-local. As a shared flag, a background
capture would have suppressed the render loop's own frame pushes for its
duration, freezing the panel precisely when the point was to avoid a freeze.

Canvas-bound plugins are drained one at a time rather than as a batch: six at
once held the render thread for 1.75s. Drains are also spaced by two seconds
while the lookahead is healthy, since taking them back to back turns one long
stall into a run of short ones. When the strip is genuinely running short the
throttle is ignored, because content matters more than smoothness there.

Measured on hardware: zero cycle-complete swaps, drains landing 2-4s apart,
lookahead holding at 1,200-3,500px, no errors.

Set continuous_scroll false to restore the swap behaviour; the old path is intact.

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KEZK1P1Q1fu5pcuVrkrCFZ

* Pace the Vegas frame loop adaptively: 31.5 -> 78.7 fps

The loop slept a fixed frame_interval on top of however long the frame took, so
at a measured 31.6ms per frame a flat 8ms of that was pure idle — a quarter of
the budget spent not rendering. It now sleeps only the remainder of the budget.

Measured on hardware: 31.5 fps to 78.7 fps sustained, with CPU going *down* from
150% to 127%. Scroll speed is unchanged at 49.9px/s against a configured 50,
because motion is derived from elapsed time rather than frame count — this buys
smoothness, not speed.

Worth recording what the bottleneck was not: the per-frame render path measures
0.34ms in total (0.18ms for the numpy slice, 0.17ms for the dirty-tracking
digest), which is a theoretical 2900 fps. Optimising any of that would have been
wasted effort. The frame was idle, not busy.

Also nices the prefetch thread. Its work is PIL and numpy that releases the GIL,
so the scheduler can act on the priority, and without it the prefetch competes
for the same cores as the render loop.

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KEZK1P1Q1fu5pcuVrkrCFZ

* Sub-pixel scrolling: motion at the frame rate, not the pixel rate

With integer positioning the number of distinct frames per second equals the
scroll speed in px/s, however fast the loop renders. Measured at 50px/s and
78.7fps, 36% of frames were byte-identical: the extra frames cost work and
bought no motion, and what was left was 50 discrete 1px steps a second.

Two things were wrong with the pre-existing sub-pixel support. get_visible_portion
never consulted sub_pixel_scrolling — it always took the integer path, so the flag
and _get_visible_portion_subpixel were dead code. And that implementation needed
scipy.ndimage.shift, which is not installed on the target devices (HAS_SCIPY is
False there), so it would not have interpolated even if reached. Verified both:
positions 1000.0 and 1000.5 produced identical frames either way.

Blending is now wired up and implemented with numpy. Two details make it
affordable: slice cached_array directly instead of building two PIL images only
to convert them straight back (the naive version measured 15x the integer path),
and use fixed-point uint16 multiply-add rather than float32, which suits the Pi's
cores and gives finer weighting than the panel can resolve. Result 0.939ms
against 0.237ms — 0.70ms added per frame, a 1065fps ceiling.

Measured on hardware: 81.2 fps with blending on, against 78.7 with it off, so no
cost within noise — and every frame is now a distinct position rather than one in
three being a repeat.

The trade is a slight horizontal softening of text, since each frame blends two
positions. Set smooth_scroll false for maximum crispness.

Also benchmarked and cleared as non-issues: extending the strip costs 9.4ms on an
11,000px strip and trimming 2.5ms, both under one frame at this rate.

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KEZK1P1Q1fu5pcuVrkrCFZ

* Add overflow handling: keep ordered content whole instead of rotating a window

The width budget split any oversized plugin by advancing a window each cycle.
That is right for interchangeable items — news headlines, odds, stock prices —
but wrong for ordered content: a league table showed ranks 1-6, then resumed at
7 two rotations later, which reads as out of order and out of context. Nobody
needs rank 23 in a ticker; they need the top of the table, every time.

overflow_mode chooses between them:

  rotate   — advance a window each cycle so everything is seen eventually
             (unchanged default)
  truncate — always show the start and drop the rest, keeping ordered content
             coherent. Records no window state, so every pass starts at the top.

Per-plugin vegas_overflow overrides the global setting, since one install has
both kinds of plugin. Also adds per-plugin vegas_max_width_screens, so content
that must stay whole can be given more room — or uncapped with 0 — without
lifting the cap on every ticker.

Applied on the test rig: f1-scoreboard and ledmatrix-leaderboard set to
truncate, and baseball given 4.5 screens because it was showing 8 of 9 games
when the whole slate needed only a little more room. Verified: F1 now reports
"the first 10 of 116 ... the rest are not shown", baseball has dropped out of
the budget log entirely, and stocks, odds-ticker and stock-news still rotate.

Also corrects the crop log, which claimed "window advances next cycle"
unconditionally and so misreported truncated crops. A test now pins the
behaviour behind the message: truncate must leave no offset recorded.

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KEZK1P1Q1fu5pcuVrkrCFZ

* Stop Vegas mode showing last night's games as if they were live

A game that was live in the evening was still being drawn as live the next
morning. Two faults combined to freeze plugin visuals indefinitely.

PR #291 added a call to plugin_adapter.invalidate_plugin_scroll_cache() so
a plugin's own cached scroll image would be rebuilt from fresh data. That
method was never implemented. hot_swap_content() wraps the call in a broad
except, so every hot swap has raised AttributeError and been swallowed
silently ever since — which is why the visuals it was meant to keep fresh
never were.

Continuous scrolling then removed the only path that reached it at all:
should_recompose() and hot_swap_content() are called from the
non-continuous branch of run_frame(), and continuous_scroll defaults to
True. So on a default install the pending-update flags were set by the
update tick, never consumed, and grew without bound.

Together these froze content completely, because refetching is not enough
on its own: the sports plugins' get_vegas_content() regenerates only "if
the cache is empty", so take_next_group() kept receiving the same picture
however often it asked.

Fixed by:

- Implementing invalidate_plugin_scroll_cache(). It covers both layouts —
  a helper directly on the plugin (stocks, news, odds-ticker) and one
  owned by a scroll-display manager (the sports scoreboards, which is the
  shape that produced this bug) — and clears cached_image and
  cached_array together, since the array is the image's numpy mirror.

- Adding StreamManager.invalidate_pending_updates() and calling it from
  the continuous branch. It only drops the caches; the plugin recomposes
  when it next comes round in the rotation. process_updates() is wrong
  here: it refetches synchronously and merges into the active buffer that
  continuous mode bypasses, and hot_swap_content() rebuilds and
  repositions the whole strip, which is the freeze-and-jump this mode
  exists to avoid.

Tests assert the fix rather than the implementation: 14 of the 17 new
tests fail without it. Includes the wiring itself, since the regression
was a call that was simply absent, and a check that the scroll position is
untouched so this cannot regress into the swap's visible jump.

All Vegas suites pass (355 tests). test_display_controller_vegas_tick.py
still cannot be collected off-device for want of rgbmatrix, identically
with and without this change.

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KEZK1P1Q1fu5pcuVrkrCFZ

* Fix two CodeRabbit-flagged test assertions in vegas density tests

test_prepared_group_is_used_without_refetching had a tautological final
assertion; now checks stream.calls directly. test_no_partial_letter_at_either_edge
required both crop edges to be blank, but the left edge here is always the
crop's start position with no lead-in gap in word_strip, so it legitimately
carries ink — only the right edge is an actual cut and needs the check.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KEZK1P1Q1fu5pcuVrkrCFZ

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Chuck
2026-07-31 09:40:38 -04:00
committed by GitHub
co-authored by Claude Sonnet 5
parent e2acbfb566
commit 5b45f35888
18 changed files with 5455 additions and 116 deletions
Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files
src/vegas_mode/render_pipeline.py
+365 -52
View File
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@ Uses the existing ScrollHelper for numpy-optimized scroll operations.
"""
import logging
import os
import time
import threading
from collections import deque
@@ -14,6 +15,7 @@ from PIL import Image
from src.common.scroll_helper import ScrollHelper
from src.vegas_mode.config import VegasModeConfig
from src.vegas_mode.geometry import separation_gap
from src.vegas_mode.stream_manager import StreamManager
if TYPE_CHECKING:
@@ -34,6 +36,10 @@ class RenderPipeline:
- Track scroll cycle completion
"""
# Minimum gap between fetches of canvas-bound plugins, so their individual
# stalls land in separate moments rather than one run of hitches.
DEFERRED_DRAIN_INTERVAL = 2.0
def __init__(
self,
config: VegasModeConfig,
@@ -66,10 +72,6 @@ class RenderPipeline:
else display_manager.height
)
# Reusable blank frame for cycle-end pushes (allocated lazily,
# re-blacked before each reuse)
self._blank_frame = None
# ScrollHelper for optimized scrolling
self.scroll_helper = ScrollHelper(
self.display_width,
@@ -85,6 +87,14 @@ class RenderPipeline:
self._staging_scroll_image: Optional[Image.Image] = None
self._buffer_lock = threading.Lock()
# Group prepared off the render thread, waiting to be appended.
self._prepared_group = None
# Plugins that need the shared canvas, appended one at a time.
self._deferred_queue: List[str] = []
self._last_drain_time = 0.0
self._prefetch_thread: Optional[threading.Thread] = None
self._prefetch_lock = threading.Lock()
# Render state
self._is_rendering = False
self._cycle_complete = False
@@ -114,6 +124,7 @@ class RenderPipeline:
"""Configure ScrollHelper with current settings."""
self.scroll_helper.set_frame_based_scrolling(self.config.frame_based_scrolling)
self.scroll_helper.set_scroll_delay(self.config.scroll_delay)
self.scroll_helper.set_sub_pixel_scrolling(self.config.smooth_scroll)
# Config scroll_speed is always pixels per second, but ScrollHelper
# interprets it differently based on frame_based_scrolling mode:
@@ -141,23 +152,37 @@ class RenderPipeline:
True if composition successful
"""
try:
# Get all buffered content
images = self.stream_manager.get_all_content_for_composition()
# Content grouped by plugin, so a separator can be placed at the
# plugin boundaries only.
grouped = self.stream_manager.get_grouped_content_for_composition()
if not images:
if not grouped:
logger.warning("No content available for composition")
return False
# Add separator gaps between images
content_with_gaps = []
for i, img in enumerate(images):
content_with_gaps.append(img)
# Collapse each plugin's rows into a single block, joined by
# intra_plugin_gap. ScrollHelper applies one uniform gap between the
# items it is given, so handing it one item per plugin is what makes
# separator_width mean "between plugins" instead of "between every
# row". Without this, a per-row ticker such as the F1 scoreboard got
# the full separator between each of its ~116 rows.
blocks = []
total_rows = 0
for plugin_id, images in grouped:
total_rows += len(images)
blocks.append(self._join_plugin_rows(images))
# Create scrolling image via ScrollHelper
# Create scrolling image via ScrollHelper.
#
# lead_gap is explicit because ScrollHelper otherwise prepends a
# full display width of black — appropriate for a standalone ticker
# scrolling in from off-screen, but in Vegas mode it is charged
# once per cycle and reads as the panel switching off.
self.scroll_helper.create_scrolling_image(
content_items=content_with_gaps,
content_items=blocks,
item_gap=self.config.separator_width,
element_gap=0
element_gap=0,
lead_gap=self.config.lead_in_width
)
# Verify scroll image was created successfully
@@ -177,11 +202,16 @@ class RenderPipeline:
self._cycle_complete = False
logger.info(
"Composed scroll image: %dx%d, %d plugins, %d items",
"Composed scroll image: %dx%d, %d plugin block(s), %d rows, "
"separator=%dpx between plugins, rows spaced to %dpx of ink "
"(min added %dpx)",
self.scroll_helper.cached_image.width if self.scroll_helper.cached_image else 0,
self.display_height,
len(self._segments_in_scroll),
len(images)
len(blocks),
total_rows,
self.config.separator_width,
self.config.min_content_separation,
self.config.intra_plugin_gap,
)
return True
@@ -191,6 +221,264 @@ class RenderPipeline:
logger.exception("Error composing scroll content")
return False
def needs_extension(self) -> bool:
"""
Whether the strip should be extended with the next group of plugins.
Cheap enough to call every frame: it is arithmetic over cached state.
"""
if not self.config.continuous_scroll or not self.scroll_helper.cached_image:
return False
threshold = int(self.display_width * self.config.extend_threshold_screens)
return self.scroll_helper.remaining_unscrolled() <= threshold
def start_prefetch(self) -> None:
"""
Begin preparing the next group in the background, if not already doing so.
This is what makes the join seamless rather than merely continuous:
fetching a group costs 0.5-4.8s (rendering leaderboard and baseball cards
dominates), and doing it on the render thread stalls the scroll for that
long. Off the render thread there is a whole group's scroll time to work
in, so by the time the strip needs extending the content is already sat
waiting.
Only paths that avoid the shared display canvas run here; anything
needing it is marked and picked up on the render thread, where it is
safe. Those are the cheap ones — display capture measured 12-14ms
against seconds for the native renders.
"""
if not self.config.continuous_scroll:
return
with self._prefetch_lock:
if self._prefetch_thread is not None and self._prefetch_thread.is_alive():
return
if self._prepared_group is not None:
return # already have one waiting
def _work():
# Deprioritise against the render loop. Linux applies nice
# per-thread, and the heavy lifting here is PIL and numpy work
# that releases the GIL, so the scheduler can actually act on
# it — without this the prefetch competes for the same cores and
# costs frames.
try:
os.nice(10)
except (OSError, AttributeError):
pass
try:
group = self.stream_manager.take_next_group(offscreen_only=True)
except Exception:
logger.exception("Background prefetch failed")
group = []
with self._prefetch_lock:
self._prepared_group = group
self._prefetch_thread = threading.Thread(
target=_work, daemon=True, name="vegas-strip-prefetch")
self._prefetch_thread.start()
def drain_deferred(self) -> bool:
"""
Fetch one queued canvas-bound plugin and append it to the strip.
Called once per frame. These plugins cannot be prepared off the render
thread — display capture and scroll-content generation both need the
shared canvas — so each costs roughly 290ms here. Doing one at a time
spreads that out instead of stalling for the whole group at once, and the
strip's lookahead means nothing runs dry while they arrive.
The cost is that a deferred plugin appears slightly after the group it
came with, which is a fair trade for a smooth scroll.
Returns:
True if a plugin was appended
"""
if not self._deferred_queue:
return False
# Space the drains out. Each costs 40-600ms, and taking them back to
# back turns one long stall into a train of short ones — barely better.
# With a healthy lookahead there is no hurry, so wait a beat between
# them; when the strip is actually running short, fetch immediately.
threshold = int(self.display_width * self.config.extend_threshold_screens)
urgent = self.scroll_helper.remaining_unscrolled() <= threshold
if not urgent:
now = time.time()
if now - self._last_drain_time < self.DEFERRED_DRAIN_INTERVAL:
return False
self._last_drain_time = now
else:
self._last_drain_time = time.time()
plugin_id = self._deferred_queue.pop(0)
plugins = getattr(self.stream_manager.plugin_manager, 'plugins', {})
plugin = plugins.get(plugin_id)
if plugin is None:
return False
try:
images = self.stream_manager.plugin_adapter.get_content(plugin, plugin_id)
except Exception:
logger.exception("[%s] Error fetching deferred content", plugin_id)
return False
if not images:
return False
appended = self.scroll_helper.append_content(
content_items=[self._join_plugin_rows(images)],
item_gap=self.config.separator_width,
element_gap=0,
)
if appended:
with self._buffer_lock:
self._active_scroll_image = self.scroll_helper.cached_image
logger.info(
"[%s] Appended deferred content: strip now %dpx, %dpx ahead",
plugin_id, self.scroll_helper.total_scroll_width,
self.scroll_helper.remaining_unscrolled()
)
return appended
def has_deferred(self) -> bool:
"""Whether any canvas-bound plugins are still queued."""
return bool(self._deferred_queue)
def _claim_prepared_group(self):
"""Take the prefetched group, if one is ready."""
with self._prefetch_lock:
group = self._prepared_group
self._prepared_group = None
return group
def extend_scroll_content(self) -> bool:
"""
Append the next group of plugins to the strip, without interrupting motion.
This is what replaces the swap. Scroll position is untouched, so the new
content simply arrives from the right; there is no substitution to see
and no restart with the viewport already full.
Consumed columns behind the viewport are then released, keeping the strip
bounded however long Vegas runs.
Returns:
True if the strip was extended
"""
try:
grouped = self._claim_prepared_group()
if grouped is None:
# Nothing prepared (first extension, or prefetch still running).
# Fetch inline; the scroll hitches, but content keeps flowing.
logger.info("No prepared group ready; fetching inline")
grouped = self.stream_manager.take_next_group()
if not grouped:
logger.warning("No content available to extend the scroll strip")
return False
# Plugins the background thread had to defer need the shared canvas,
# so they can only be fetched here. Queue them rather than doing all
# of them now: measured, six in one go held the render thread for
# 1.75s. They are trickled in one per frame by drain_deferred(),
# which the strip's lookahead comfortably absorbs.
deferred = [pid for pid, images in grouped if images is None]
if deferred:
self._deferred_queue.extend(deferred)
logger.info(
"Queued %d plugin(s) needing the render thread: %s",
len(deferred), ', '.join(deferred)
)
grouped = [(pid, imgs) for pid, imgs in grouped if imgs]
if not grouped:
# Everything in this group is queued; the queue will extend the
# strip as it drains, so this is not a failure.
logger.info("Whole group deferred; strip will extend as it drains")
self.start_prefetch()
return bool(deferred)
blocks = []
total_rows = 0
for _plugin_id, images in grouped:
total_rows += len(images)
blocks.append(self._join_plugin_rows(images))
appended = self.scroll_helper.append_content(
content_items=blocks,
item_gap=self.config.separator_width,
element_gap=0,
)
if not appended:
return False
# Keep a screen's worth behind the viewport as a safety margin.
self.scroll_helper.drop_scrolled_prefix(keep_before=self.display_width)
with self._buffer_lock:
self._active_scroll_image = self.scroll_helper.cached_image
self._segments_in_scroll = [pid for pid, _ in grouped]
self.stats['composition_count'] += 1
self.stats['extensions'] = self.stats.get('extensions', 0) + 1
logger.info(
"Extended scroll strip with %d plugin block(s), %d rows: "
"strip now %dpx, %dpx still ahead of the viewport",
len(blocks), total_rows, self.scroll_helper.total_scroll_width,
self.scroll_helper.remaining_unscrolled()
)
# Line up the group after this one straight away, so it is ready
# well before the strip runs short again.
self.start_prefetch()
return True
except (ValueError, TypeError, OSError, RuntimeError):
logger.exception("Error extending scroll content")
return False
def _join_plugin_rows(self, images: List[Image.Image]) -> Image.Image:
"""
Concatenate one plugin's images into a single block.
Args:
images: That plugin's content, in order
Returns:
A single image with the rows laid out left to right, separated by
``intra_plugin_gap``. Returned unchanged when there is only one row,
which is the common case and avoids a pointless copy.
"""
if len(images) == 1:
return images[0]
floor = max(0, self.config.intra_plugin_gap)
target = max(0, self.config.min_content_separation)
threshold = self.config.trim_threshold
# Space by measured separation, not a flat gap. Rows drawn flush to
# their own edges (sports score cards) would otherwise end up nearly
# touching, while rows that already carry wide margins would be pushed
# needlessly further apart.
gaps = [
separation_gap(images[i], images[i + 1], target, floor, threshold)
for i in range(len(images) - 1)
]
width = sum(img.width for img in images) + sum(gaps)
height = max(img.height for img in images)
block = Image.new('RGB', (width, height), (0, 0, 0))
x = 0
for i, img in enumerate(images):
block.paste(img, (x, 0))
x += img.width + (gaps[i] if i < len(gaps) else 0)
return block
def render_frame(self) -> bool:
"""
Render a single frame to the display.
@@ -211,21 +499,33 @@ class RenderPipeline:
# Determine if the cycle is done.
#
# scroll_helper considers a cycle complete only after
# total_distance_scrolled >= total_scroll_width + display_width.
# That extra display_width of travel causes a "wrap-around" phase
# where scroll_position resets to ~0 and the first plugin's content
# re-enters from the right — the user sees this 2-3 s of re-entry
# as "a plugin partially displaying before the next one starts."
# get_visible_portion wraps: once scroll_position + display_width
# passes the end of the strip it fills the right-hand side of the
# frame from the *head* of the same strip. So the last
# display_width of travel shows the cycle's first plugin re-entering
# on the right while its last plugin exits on the left, and the
# recompose that follows then replaces both at once. That reads as
# the ticker "switching mid-scroll".
#
# We end the cycle as soon as total_distance_scrolled reaches
# total_scroll_width (the wrap-around point), before any second-pass
# content becomes visible. The scroll_helper's own is_scroll_complete()
# check is kept as a fallback for any edge-cases where that threshold
# is never hit.
# This used to be hidden because the strip began with a full
# display_width of blank, so the wrapped-in region was black.
# lead_in_width now defaults to 0 (that blank was 10s of dead panel
# at 50px/s), which exposed the wrap — so the cycle has to end
# before it, one display width earlier.
#
# A strip no wider than the display never wraps, and subtracting
# would make the cycle complete instantly, so clamp in that case.
# In continuous mode there is no cycle to complete: the strip is
# extended before the scroll can reach its end, so the wrap is never
# entered and motion never stops. The completion path below stays for
# the swap behaviour and as a backstop if an extension fails.
wrap_point = self.scroll_helper.total_scroll_width
if wrap_point > self.display_width:
wrap_point -= self.display_width
at_wrap_point = (
not self._cycle_complete and
self.scroll_helper.total_distance_scrolled >= self.scroll_helper.total_scroll_width
self.scroll_helper.total_distance_scrolled >= wrap_point
)
if at_wrap_point or self.scroll_helper.is_scroll_complete():
@@ -236,24 +536,17 @@ class RenderPipeline:
"Scroll cycle complete after %.1fs",
time.time() - self._cycle_start_time
)
# Push blank immediately so the hardware never shows any
# post-wrap content while the coordinator recomposes the
# next cycle (~100 ms). The blank is allocated once and
# reused across cycle wraps (fresh paste each time in case
# a consumer drew on the previous one).
try:
if self._blank_frame is None or self._blank_frame.size != (
self.display_width, self.display_height):
self._blank_frame = Image.new(
'RGB', (self.display_width, self.display_height))
else:
self._blank_frame.paste(
(0, 0, 0),
(0, 0, self.display_width, self.display_height))
self.display_manager.image = self._blank_frame
self.display_manager.update_display()
except Exception:
logger.exception("Failed to write blank frame to display at cycle end")
# Deliberately leave the last rendered frame on the panel.
#
# This used to push a blank frame so no post-wrap content
# could be seen while the next cycle was composed. But
# recomposing is synchronous and fetches plugin content:
# measured 84ms at best and 4.8s at worst on a 512px panel,
# and every millisecond of it was black. Holding the last
# frame instead turns that into a brief freeze, which reads
# as far less broken than the display switching off. The
# frame is already past the end of the content, so there is
# no second-pass content to leak.
return True # Cycle done; coordinator starts new cycle next frame
# Get visible portion
@@ -336,6 +629,25 @@ class RenderPipeline:
return False
def refresh_updated_plugins(self) -> bool:
"""
Let changed plugin data reach the strip without interrupting motion.
Used instead of :meth:`hot_swap_content` when scrolling continuously.
The swap rebuilds the whole image and repositions the scroll, which is
visible as a freeze and a jump; the strip is extended here rather than
replaced, so it is enough to drop the stale caches and let the plugin
recompose when it next comes round.
Returns:
True if any plugin's cached content was dropped.
"""
try:
return bool(self.stream_manager.invalidate_pending_updates())
except Exception: # pylint: disable=broad-except
logger.exception("Failed to refresh updated plugins")
return False
def hot_swap_content(self) -> bool:
"""
Hot-swap to new composed content.
@@ -415,11 +727,12 @@ class RenderPipeline:
result = self.compose_scroll_content()
if result and self.sync_manager:
# When sync is active, start the leader at display_width instead of 0.
# This skips the initial black gap so the leader immediately shows content.
# The follower starts at position 0 (the gap) which looks like a clean
# blank transition rather than near-end content wrapping around.
self.scroll_helper.scroll_position = float(self.display_width)
# When sync is active, start the leader past the lead-in gap so it
# immediately shows content, leaving the follower on the blank gap
# for a clean transition rather than near-end content wrapping
# around. This tracks lead_in_width rather than assuming a full
# display width of gap, which is no longer the default.
self.scroll_helper.scroll_position = float(self.config.lead_in_width)
if result and self.sync_manager:
# Signal follower that a new cycle started (triggers its own rebuild)