LEDMatrix/CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

Notable changes to the LEDMatrix core. The version below is the value of src.__version__, which the plugin loader reports to compatibility checks and which plugin manifests reference via ledmatrix_min_version.

Why this file exists: the plugin monorepo bundles fallback copies of several core modules (see docs/plugin-development/08-shared-sports-code.md in ledmatrix-plugins). A plugin may delete its bundled copy only when its manifest floors on the first core release that ships the module — which requires module additions to be recorded here, against a version number. When you add a module plugins will import via src.*, note it in the Unreleased section and bump src/__init__.py in the release that ships it.

Use ledmatrix_min_version in manifests, not ledmatrix_min. The loader accepts both, but the store flags the old spelling as deprecated (store_manager.py) and only the new one is in schema/manifest_schema.json.

Unreleased

• Scripts and installer:

  • fix_web_permissions.sh makes safe_plugin_rm.sh and safe_pip_install.sh root-owned again after resetting ownership. A web-user-owned copy of either is a root shell, since sudo lets the web user run them as root. It also restores config_secrets.json to mode 640.
  • configure_wifi_permissions.sh checks its rules with visudo -c before installing them, and grants the NetworkManager captive-portal cp and rm commands wifi_manager runs.
  • configure_web_sudo.sh uses a random temp file and installs its rules with mode 440.
  • The installer prints its completion summary before the -y reboot, and describes the setup access point as an open network (it was shown with a password it doesn't have).
  • fix_cache_permissions.sh applies setup_cache.sh's ledmatrix-group model instead of setting 777.
  • check_system_compatibility.sh reports anything but Debian 13 (Trixie) as unsupported, and reaches its summary.
  • New scripts/README.md lists every script.

• Docs:

  • New docs/ARCHITECTURE.md (processes, shared state, display loop, plugin system, web UI) and docs/PERMISSIONS.md (owners, modes, both sudoers files, repair scripts).
  • Deprecated plugin APIs are marked in the plugin docs.
  • src/common/README.md covers every module.
  • Stale setup, service and troubleshooting claims are corrected.

• The web service (ledmatrix-web) logs through src.logging_config like the display service, so journalctl -p err -u ledmatrix-web works. Successful GET/HEAD/OPTIONS requests (the UI's polling) are logged at DEBUG instead of INFO; 4xx at WARNING, 5xx at ERROR. LEDMATRIX_DEBUG=true shows them again. web_interface/logging_config.py is removed. The web cache (web_interface/cache.py) now honours the TTL a value was stored with and is thread-safe.

• One plugin-directory resolver, src/plugin_system/plugin_dirs.py, behind discovery, PluginManager.get_plugin_directory, PluginLoader, the store and state reconciliation. A manifest's id wins over a directory merely named for the id; hidden and .standalone-backup- directories are never treated as plugins (auto-update could previously try to update a backup); ids like a/b or .. resolve to nothing everywhere. Installs where each directory is named for its manifest id, the installer's layout, behave as before.

• /api/v3 routes answer an exception they don't handle themselves from one blueprint error handler, with the same {status, message, details} body the 53 removed per-route catch-alls returned. ErrorCategory and the error_category key are removed from src.web_interface.errors (nothing read them); exception_error_response() replaces the from_exception + error_response pairs. A failing plugin action script's error now names the real failure instead of UnboundLocalError.

• FontManager.get_font() returns a BDF font at its native size when asked for a size the file doesn't contain (5x7.bdf at 8 or 10px, say). It used to return PIL's default font, a different typeface, so a plugin that relied on that will now render the font it asked for.

• src.wifi_manager.get_wifi_status_path() — where WiFi status messages for the display are written (config/wifi_status.json).

• src.device_location — a blank Location field on a Starlark (Tidbyt) app now renders at the device's City / State / Country (geocoded once via Open-Meteo and cached) instead of the app author's hard-coded default, usually San Francisco. A location saved on the app still wins. With no device city set, or when the lookup fails or finds no match, the app keeps its own default (a failed lookup is retried after 30 minutes). Clearing an app's location in the web UI now actually clears it; the save used to drop the blank field, so the old value stayed.

• src.common.bdf_font — load_bdf_face(path, size) (a cached freetype.Face plus the pixel size it really renders at, falling back to the file's native strike) and draw_bdf_text(draw, text, x, y, face, color). DisplayManager, FontManager, element_style and the plugin test harness now all load and draw BDF text through it; the panel's pixels are unchanged and BDF text draws 10-250x faster. The plugin test harness's calendar_font / bdf_5x7_font now has the panel's 7px size set: it used to be an unsized face, so in golden images and check_plugin / dev_server previews its text sat 6px above where the panel draws it (off the canvas entirely near the top) and get_font_height() returned 0.

• The web UI's Fonts tab has a Used by column: the loaded plugins that registered each font with FontManager.register_manager_font(), published by the display service to the shared cache (src/font_usage.py) and merged into GET /api/v3/fonts/catalog as used_by. Deleting a font a plugin uses now names those plugins in the confirmation (it is not blocked). FontManager.forget_manager_fonts() is new; unloading a plugin calls it.

Deprecated, removed in 3.7.0 (each logs a warning on first use; see docs/PLUGIN_API_REFERENCE.md#deprecated-apis for replacements). Nothing in core, the monorepo or the registry's third-party plugins calls them:

• CacheManager: has_data_changed, update_cache, setup_persistent_cache, get_sport_live_interval, get_sport_key_from_cache_key, get_background_cached_data, is_background_data_available, record_cache_hit, record_cache_miss, record_fetch_time, get_cache_metrics, log_cache_metrics, get_memory_cache_stats.
• DisplayManager: draw_weather_icon, draw_sun, draw_cloud, draw_rain, draw_snow, draw_text_with_icons, get_scrolling_stats.
• FontManager: set_override, remove_override, get_overrides, add_font, remove_font, validate_font, get_font_catalog, get_available_fonts, get_size_tokens, get_performance_stats, get_manager_fonts, get_detected_fonts, get_plugin_fonts, unregister_plugin_fonts.
• PluginManager.get_enabled_plugins.

Config writes

• A power cut or crash mid-save can no longer leave config/config.json truncated. ConfigManager.save_config() wrote the file in place; it, save_config_atomic(), save_raw_file_content() and backup rollback now share one writer (atomic_write_text in src/config_manager_atomic.py) that fsyncs a temp file, renames it into place and fsyncs the directory.
• save_config_atomic() no longer rewrites config_secrets.json on every save, only when its content changes, and rotating backups no longer re-reads every backup. The backups themselves are unchanged: config/backups/config.json.backup.<version> plus its paired secrets backup, five newest kept.
• A save by the root-run display service keeps the file's previous owner instead of handing config.json to root, and an install path with "secrets" in a directory name no longer makes config.json mode 0640.

New names in existing modules (no new modules; a plugin importing these must floor on the release that ships them):

• src.common.api_helper: USER_AGENT, DEFAULT_HTTP_HEADERS (read-only).
• src.logo_downloader: fetch_logo, save_png_atomically, shared_downloader.
• src.common.sports_card.unshare_element_fonts takes an optional third argument, element_for_font (default: the module's ELEMENT_FOR_FONT, so existing calls are unchanged).

Sports twins

• The SportsCoreSharedMixin helpers that behave identically to their sports_card twins (_card_option, _vs_text, _format_game_time, _coerce_rgb, _crisp_size, _unshare_element_fonts, the colour/month/ weekday/font-grid tables) are now thin wrappers over the sports_card functions, and _format_game_date / _schema_font_size share its formatting body and schema parser. No method was removed or renamed and nothing renders differently: test/test_sports_twins.py checks each pair against the same inputs, and the old and new mixin agree on every input there. The pairs that do differ -- favourite-result colours on nested payloads, the weekday's timezone, the element-name map, per-mode colours -- are left as they are and pinned in that test.

Logo downloads

• download_missing_logo / LogoDownloader.download_logo (the path the scoreboard plugins use) now stream the logo with a 10 MB cap, accept only an image/* response that Pillow can decode, and move the finished RGBA PNG into place atomically. A failed, oversized or non-image download no longer leaves a partial file behind, and no longer replaces a logo already on disk. LogoHelper._download_logo goes through the same code. Signatures and return values are unchanged; saved files are pixel-identical to before.
• download_missing_logo reuses one downloader (one requests.Session) per thread instead of building a new one for every logo.
• Placeholder logos are written atomically, without the test_write.tmp probe file.

HTTP headers

• The logo downloader and the background data service send the real LEDMatrix/1.0 (+https://github.com/ChuckBuilds/LEDMatrix) User-Agent instead of a yourusername / contact@example.com placeholder, and no longer set Accept-Encoding: ... br by hand (brotli is not installed, so a br response could not be decoded); requests picks the encodings.

Plugin error reporting

• /api/v3/errors/summary and /api/v3/errors/plugin/<id> report the errors the display service recorded. They used to read the web process's own error aggregator, which never records anything, so they always answered "no errors". The display service now publishes a bounded snapshot to the shared cache (plugin_error_snapshot, at most every 10 seconds and only on change; src/error_aggregator.py, started from DisplayController.__init__). Responses keep their shape and add snapshot_available, generated_at and clear_pending; exception text has credentials redacted.
• POST /api/v3/errors/clear records a request (plugin_error_clear_request) the display service applies within about 5 seconds; reads hide the cleared errors at once. It accepts "all": true, and cleared_count can be null when the count is only known to the display service.
• The Logs tab has a Plugin errors panel: per-plugin counts, repeating errors and a Clear button.
• Credential redaction in exception text (src/redaction.py) takes time proportional to the text, not its square. Two patterns were quadratic: URL user:password@, on a long unbroken run of letters or digits (a hex digest, an ID), and Authorization: followed by a long run of whitespace. Either used to stall every thread of the display service for up to seconds each time the snapshot was published: about 0.5s for 20k characters of hex, 8s for 20k spaces. What gets redacted is unchanged.

Removed

• The skin system. Skins never rendered with the current scoreboard plugins, so they are gone rather than "not supported yet": src/skin_system/, skins/, scripts/validate_skin.py, GET /api/v3/skins, the store's "type": "skin" handling and docs/SKIN_SYSTEM.md / docs/CREATING_SKINS.md. A skin or skin_options key left in a plugin's saved config still loads and saves without a validation error; it is ignored, and the next save of that plugin's settings removes it (unless the plugin's own schema declares the key).
• src/base_classes/ (SportsCore, the sport and mode classes, CelebrationMixin, the rotation strategies, data_sources, api_extractors). No known plugin imports it. A plugin that does must use src.common or its own copy of the code.

3.5.0

New modules a plugin may import via src.* (floor on 3.5.0):

• src/common/sports_helpers.py — the helpers the scoreboards' sports.py carry byte-identical copies of: clamp_window, clamp_seconds, logo_needs_refresh, spread_weighted_order (+ MIN_WINDOW_DAYS, MAX_WINDOW_DAYS), and SportsHelpersMixin with _mode_customization, _setting_int, _reset_dwell_on_reentry, _next_switch_index, _spread_weighted_order, _odds_color, _upcoming_date_and_time_text under the plugins' names and signatures, plus the _favorite_key override point. Constructor-free; keeps lazy state on its host (see the module docstring, which also gives the host contract). A new module rather than more methods on sports_shared: a plugin that deletes a copy and leans on an older module having grown the method fails at runtime with AttributeError, which no load-time check sees, while a missing module fails at load. Nothing in core uses it yet.
• test/test_common_is_hardware_free.py — src/common must import without rgbmatrix and never import src.base_classes, src.display_manager or src.plugin_system at module level.
• src/common/espn_dates.py — fetch_espn_scoreboard, fetch_espn_date_chunks, espn_date_chunks, clamp_espn_limit, ESPN_MAX_LIMIT: fetch an ESPN scoreboard date range now that ESPN rejects ranges (see Sports data below). Plugins bundle a copy of it.

Config saves and plugin config preparation

• A JSON POST /api/v3/config/main changes only the keys it sends. The MQTT bridge's brightness slider used to turn off disable_hardware_pulsing, inverse_colors, show_refresh_rate and use_short_date_format, and a timezone- or location-only save turned off web-UI autostart and weekly automatic updates. Missing checkboxes still save as unchecked for the settings forms (they now send a hidden __form_section field) and for form-encoded posts.
• A partial JSON POST /api/v3/plugins/config merges onto the plugin's stored settings instead of resetting everything it didn't send to the schema defaults, and keeps a submitted skin, skin_options, vegas_width_pct, vegas_overflow or vegas_max_width_screens (they were silently dropped).
• Plugin sections posted to /config/main are validated and prepared exactly like /plugins/config; a value that endpoint rejects is rejected here too, and nothing is saved.
• Legacy boolean settings (#588) are read as {"enabled": ...} objects everywhere, not just when the plugin loads: GET /plugins/config returns the object, posting it back saves, and hot reload hands plugins the same shape (schema defaults included) they were constructed with. schema_manager.prepare_plugin_config is the one implementation.
• A plugin's settings tab shows schema defaults for options its saved config doesn't have yet. A boolean added with "default": true in a plugin update (geochron 1.2.0's show_date and show_date_line) used to render unchecked, and the next save of that tab stored it as false. Enum dropdowns likewise showed their first option instead of the default. The partial now runs the stored section through prepare_plugin_config like GET /plugins/config (secrets are still masked, after the merge), and the form falls back to a field's own default inside objects that declare a default of their own.
• scripts/dev_server.py, check_plugin.py, render_plugin.py and the plugin harness build configs the way a device does: nested defaults are included, a schema enabled: false no longer beats the forced enabled: true in the dev server, and nested overrides such as {"nhl": {"enabled": true}} keep the other defaults of that section.
• Clearing Vegas "Min/Max Cycle Time" no longer rejects the whole Display save, and those fields no longer add junk entries to display.display_durations.
• Turning automatic updates on from the Raw JSON editor finishes their setup like the General tab does, instead of waiting for the next display restart.
• POST /config/schedule and /config/dim-schedule accept the per-day days.<day>.{enabled,start_time,end_time} shape their GETs return, as well as the flat form keys.
• The startup check no longer warns that auto_update or dim_schedule is "enabled but not found in plugins directory", and plugin ids that collide with any core config section are flagged: the last private copies of the core-key list now use src/core_config_keys.py.

Sports data

• Since 2026-09-15 ESPN answers dates=YYYYMMDD-YYYYMMDD scoreboard queries with 400 Bad Request for every sport, so season schedules, the weeks window and today's games all failed ("400 Client Error" from the NFL/NCAAFB managers and src.background_data_service). A rejected range is now re-fetched as whole months (dates=YYYYMM) plus the leftover days at each end, which cover the window exactly: a football season is 8 requests. A month that returns exactly 500 events is truncated and is re-fetched day by day.
• Scoreboard requests send limit=500 at most. Above 500 ESPN silently returns a short list: college football gave 25 of 68 games for one Saturday at the limit=1000 everything used to send.
• BackgroundDataService.handles_espn_date_ranges is True. Plugins check it to decide whether to submit a season range to the service or fetch it themselves on an older core.
• A league with no live games no longer backs its poll off past the next kickoff. The escalation counted empty looks and nothing else, so a league three hours before kickoff was indistinguishable from one out of season and both reached live_idle_max_interval: measured gaps of up to 928 seconds, and a rig that sat for a quarter of an hour with eight NFL games in progress without noticing any of them. The wait is now clamped so it cannot run past the earliest start still ahead, which the live fetch already downloads, so it costs no extra request. Just after a kickoff the live cadence is held for a grace window, because a provider that has not yet flipped the status would otherwise read as another empty check and escalate the back-off again.
• ESPN date chunks are fetched six at a time (ESPN_CHUNK_WORKERS) in two passes: months and edge days first, then the days of any month that came back at the cap. A cold college-baseball season is about 130 requests, and they went out one at a time; March and April measured on a Pi 4 (63 requests, 3101 events) went from 11.2s to 1.6s. Merged events still follow espn_date_chunks order, so the payload does not depend on which request won the race, and a capped month's payload is dropped before its days are fetched, which keeps the peak memory of a four-capped-month fetch to about 16 MB over the sequential path rather than 43 MB — docs/LOW_MEMORY_BOARDS.md puts a 1 GB Pi 3B+ at under 200 MB of headroom.
• ESPNDataSource.fetch_standings asks each league the endpoint that league actually publishes. It tried /standings first whatever the league and fell back to /rankings only on a 404, but college leagues answer /standings with a 200 that carries no poll, so the fallback never fired: the rank badge simply never appeared and anything keyed off rankings quietly did nothing. Endpoints are now ordered by whether the league publishes a poll, and a 200 that lacks the key counts as a miss, so a league answering both still ends up with whichever carries the poll. Only a 404 is routine — that is how a league says it has none; a connection error, a timeout or an unparseable body is logged as an error again, and a bug raised while inspecting the payload is no longer swallowed as a missing poll. This is the implementation the football, baseball and hockey boards already ship; core was the last copy on the old one.

Scrolling

• Scoreboard scroll speed no longer changes with the General tab's "Scroll Frame Rate" (target_fps). Scoreboards on src.common.sports_scroll computed their speed for that rate while the panel kept presenting at its real refresh, so on a 100 Hz panel 60 ran a 50 px/s scoreboard at 100 px/s and 200 ran it at 25 px/s. Speed now comes from scroll_speed and the panel refresh only. The field is labelled legacy: nothing in core scrolling reads it. Anyone who lowered it will see scoreboards scroll slower than before -- at the speed they configured.
• scripts/scroll_speeds.py --measure / --demo open the panel with the display service's own options (DisplayManager.apply_matrix_options), so display.runtime.gpio_slowdown, rp1_rio, panel_type and orientation are honoured; the script used to read gpio_slowdown from display.hardware. Its closing advice now gives the scroll_speed + scroll_delay pair instead of scroll_pixels_per_second, which the resolver ignores whenever the pair is present.
• The frame-stats log no longer opens a scroll with a one-frame window for scrollers that never call reset_scroll().
• Removed dead scroll code: the optional scipy import (HAS_SCIPY), ScrollHelper._last_integer_position and frame_time_target. ScrollHelper.target_fps / set_target_fps() remain, documented as informational.
• Docs describe the fixed-step scroll model: PLUGIN_API_REFERENCE.md documents set_scrolling_state(..., frame_hold) (omitting the hold runs a scroll frame_hold times too fast), SCROLL_PERFORMANCE.md no longer reads a held 20 ms frame as missed refreshes, and Vegas frame_based_scrolling / scroll_delay are described as the speed clamp they are rather than frame stepping. Scoreboard scroll_delay is documented as ignored for pacing.

Web interface

• The plugin settings form honours "x-display": "hidden" in config schemas: the property gets no control at any depth (top level, nested objects, array rows, Advanced Settings), and saving the form never changes its stored value. JSON API saves are unaffected. Lets plugins keep deprecated or internal keys declared, e.g. countdown's row id and weather's api_key / radar_zoom. See docs/widget-guide.md.
• Display settings no longer silently cut values on save: columns were capped at 128, chain length at 24 and PWM LSB nanoseconds at 500. Columns have no upper limit, chain length is 1–255 and rows must be even and 8–64 (see "Display hardware settings the library refuses" below); parallel is 1–3 and PWM dither bits 0–2, matching the library. A stored GPIO slowdown, PWM dither bits or refresh-rate cap of 0 no longer shows (and re-saves) as 3, 1 or 120, and the refresh cap accepts 0 (no cap). The config API rejects out-of-range or non-integer rows, cols, chain_length, parallel, brightness, scan_mode, pwm_bits, pwm_dither_bits, pwm_lsb_nanoseconds, limit_refresh_rate_hz, row_address_type, multiplexing and gpio_slowdown with a 400 (JSON true or 5.5 used to save as 1 or 5) instead of saving a config the matrix refuses to start with.
• Display setting help tips and README / config-reference entries corrected and completed: panel_type and rp1_rio are documented, show_refresh_rate prints to the console rather than drawing on the panel, PWM dither bits raise the refresh rate rather than lowering it, and every numeric setting states its range.
• Row Address Type offers 5, the SM5368 / B707 row shift register. The Waveshare 96x48 V2 panel (back silkscreen 24S-A1) needs it with RGB sequence BGR and, on a Pi 4, a GPIO slowdown of 6–8. Panels with FM6124 column drivers need no Panel Type.
• On a Raspberry Pi 5 the pinned rgbmatrix library can drive only row address types 0 and 2, parallel 1–3 and the standard mappings. For anything else it returns no matrix, which the Python binding doesn't catch, so the display service crashed and restarted every 10 seconds. DisplayManager now refuses those settings before creating the matrix (logged, reported by /api/v3/hardware/status, fallback mode), the config API rejects them, and the Display form offers only row address types 0 and 2 on a Pi 5. The rule lives in src/pi5_matrix_support.py and must be re-checked when the submodule is bumped.
• The Plugin Config Warning no longer lists core settings as plugins that are "in config but not installed" (seen as auto_update on 3.4.0, where the advice would have deleted the weekly-update setting). Core top-level config keys now live in one list, src/core_config_keys.py, which reconciliation uses and tests pin to config.template.json and the settings save endpoint. A stored warning is also dropped once its entry is no longer a plugin in config, so an old verdict clears without a restart.
• Check & Update All no longer sends installed Starlark apps (starlark:<app_id> entries in /plugins/installed) to the plugin updater, which answered each with a 500 "plugin not found". POST /plugins/update now answers a starlark: id with a 400 saying it is a Starlark app. A request that gets no HTTP answer (e.g. the web service restarting mid-run) is re-sent with backoff instead of being counted as failed and skipped — that is how a disabled plugin with an update waiting was silently left out.
• Three routes consulted the web process's plugin manifests without discovering plugins first, so they misbehaved from every ledmatrix-web restart until something else ran a discovery — in practice until someone opened the dashboard, measured at over three minutes on one rig. POST /display/on-demand/start and POST /plugins/toggle answered 404 "Plugin not found", and POST /config/main did not recognise a plugin section, so it skipped secret separation and wrote the plugin's API key to config.json in plain text instead of config_secrets.json. The routes now discover when nothing has been discovered yet, and rescan once when a specific plugin id (or, for on-demand by mode, a mode) is not found, so a plugin installed since the last scan is found too.

Security (request paths and inline handlers, siblings of #561)

• POST /api/v3/plugins/assets/upload, GET .../assets/list and POST .../assets/delete validate plugin_id with src/common/path_safety and answer 400 otherwise. A plugin_id of ../../config used to create an uploads/ directory outside assets/plugins, write images and .metadata.json there, list it, and delete whatever file a metadata entry named. Delete now unlinks only a path that resolves inside that plugin's uploads directory (any other entry is dropped without touching a file).
• PluginManager.get_plugin_directory() returns None for anything but a plain name, so POST /api/v3/plugins/action can no longer run a manifest script from a directory outside the plugins directory (../elsewhere); the route also rejects such ids with 400.
• Plugin Store, saved-repository and custom-registry buttons escape registry values for their inline onclick handlers (jsStringAttr in plugins_manager.js). An entry id containing ' used to close the attribute and add its own script. The store's View button opens only http(s) links.
• The uploaded-images list escapes each file's original name, path and ids; a name like <img src=x onerror=...>.png was inserted as markup.

Display hardware settings the library refuses

• The rgbmatrix library answers several settings with no matrix or abort() rather than an error, on every board, so the display service crash-looped instead of falling back: rows above 64, chain_length above 255 (the Python binding stores it in one byte; this was documented as "no upper limit"), a misspelled hardware_mapping, and parallel 2–3 on a mapping with one output (adafruit-hat, adafruit-hat-pwm, regular-pi1, classic-pi1) — the last one reachable from the Display form on the default mapping. The config API now refuses them with a 400 naming the setting, and DisplayManager refuses a hand-edited one before creating the matrix: logged, fallback mode, reported by /api/v3/hardware/status. The rules, including the Pi 5 ones, live in src/matrix_support.py and must be re-checked when the submodule is bumped.
• /api/v3/hardware/status adds cause: "settings" when LEDMatrix refused the config, "library" when the library failed. The Display tab banner and the fallback log line give the Pi 5 rebuild hint only for a library failure; they used to follow every failure with it and with GPIO slowdown advice.
• The Display form offers the classic and classic-pi1 mappings and the 90 / 270 orientations, and renders any other stored mapping selected with a warning. With no option selected the browser posted the first one, so one unrelated save rewrote those settings. The API accepts orientation 90 and 270, which DisplayManager already applied.
• The display size the web preview, Starlark magnify default and scripts/dev/vegas_audit.py compute (src/display_geometry.py) now applies orientation and pixel_mapper_config as the library does: Rotate:90 swaps width and height, U-mapper folds the chain.
• One Raspberry Pi 5 GPIO slowdown recommendation everywhere: 1–3 in PIO mode, starting at 1. README and the config reference now describe the template values as the defaults; the "code default" values they listed never apply, because config migration fills missing keys from the template.

Plugin system

• A plugin no longer starts with a schema warning and a degraded flag because config.json still holds a boolean where its schema now has an object with an enabled property (news' global.dynamic_duration: true). The loader reads the boolean as {"enabled": <bool>} before merging schema defaults and validating, the same rule the settings form already applies (legacy_bool_as_object in src/plugin_system/schema_manager.py). Nothing is written at load; the next save of that plugin's settings stores the object. Other type mismatches still warn.

Core

• ConfigManager.load_config() no longer raises on a host without the POSIX ownership APIs. The self-heal that chgrp's config_secrets.json to the shared group (added in #416) looked up os.geteuid unguarded; that name does not exist on Windows, and the resulting AttributeError is not an OSError, so it escaped the helper's own "best-effort" handling and every caller's. Any Windows checkout with a config/config_secrets.json got a ConfigError from every config load and could not import web_interface.app at all. ensure_shared_group_ownership() now returns immediately when os.geteuid or os.chown is missing. No behaviour change on the Pi.
• Restoring a backup on Windows no longer fails over files that already exist. The restore carries each replaced file's owner across with os.chown, which does not exist on Windows; the AttributeError escaped the per-file error handling, so the restore stopped at config.json with nothing restored. The ownership step is now skipped where os.chown is missing. No behaviour change on the Pi.

Cache permissions

• The web interface can read what the display service caches again. ledmatrix-web.service carried CacheDirectory=ledmatrix, and systemd re-owns /var/cache/ledmatrix and its contents to the unit's User= whenever the directory's owner differs, which erased the root:ledmatrix setgid layout the installers set up: every file the root display service wrote afterwards was root:root 0660 and unreadable by the web interface (392 unreadable files on one rig, with display status, on-demand state and plugin health empty). Since #547 the web unit is rendered from its template on every install, so every fresh install hit this. DiskCache.set now gives each file the directory's group (when that directory is group-writable) and 0660 on the open descriptor before the rename, independent of setgid, which also closes a window where a fresh file was visible as mkstemp's 0600. DiskCache.share_existing_files repairs files an older version left behind, once per process, through O_NOFOLLOW descriptors, skipping hard links and other users' files. Existing installs only ever receive git pull, so that repair is the fix for them; new installs also drop CacheDirectory= and CacheDirectoryMode= from the web unit.
• install_web_service.sh replaces an existing cache directory's group whenever the installing user is not in it. It used to replace only root's, so a root:ledmatrix directory belonging to a user outside that group was left alone and everything root wrote there stayed unreadable.
• /display/on-demand/status and the current-display status read the display service's keys with memory_ttl=0, as every other cross-process reader already does. They served the first copy the web process had read for the full 120s max_age, so on-demand reported "active" for over 100 seconds after the file on disk said "idle".

Automatic updates and Update Code

• An update that changes web_interface/requirements.txt is no longer rolled back on every auto-updating device. safe_pip_install.sh allowed only the root requirements.txt, so the install Update Code and the health check run for the web requirements was refused, and the health check rolls back any update whose dependencies failed (Install Base Requirements failed the same way). The wrapper now allows both core requirement files; a core requirement file symlinked out of the project is refused.
• The automatic update's local-change check and Update Code now count changes the same way (auto_update.local_changes): permission-only changes and anything under plugins/ or plugin-repos/ don't count, and a core path that merely contains plugins/ does. Such edits used to pass the check and then be stashed by the pull and never restored, despite "will not stash your changes". The pull's --autostash now carries them across. Update Code still stashes other edits; the automatic update refuses instead.
• When the automatic update's own rollback fails (a partial pull, or a health check that never started), plugins are no longer updated and the display is not restarted, as the 3.4.0 notes promised.
• The health check's dependency reinstall no longer retries pip failures or timeouts with a second bash path, and all reinstalls share a 10-minute budget, so a rollback finishes inside the unit's 30-minute limit instead of being killed mid-way.

Installers

• The generated ledmatrix_web sudoers rules are parsed before they are installed. Both installers built the drop-in from which lookups and copied it into /etc/sudoers.d without ever checking it, and a malformed file there makes sudo refuse every command for every user — on a headless Pi, that is unrecoverable over SSH. first_time_install.sh now runs visudo -c on the generated file and, if it does not parse, prints what visudo said and leaves the installed file untouched instead of replacing it with a broken one; configure_web_sudo.sh does the same before offering the rules for confirmation. first_time_install.sh also built that file at a fixed /tmp path as root; mktemp now picks the name.

Small fixes (update-all, plugin system settings, scripts)

• Check & Update All counts a plugin that had nothing to update as "already up to date" instead of "updated". ZIP-installed monorepo plugins (most official ones) already at the registry version were called "updated successfully" on every run. POST /plugins/update now returns data.update_status (updated, up_to_date, local_only).
• An update request that got an HTTP error answer without an error_code, or a body that is not JSON (e.g. a reverse proxy's 502 page), is no longer classified as NETWORK_ERROR and re-sent five times. Only a request that got no HTTP answer is retried; the rest are API_ERROR with the HTTP status.
• The General tab no longer shows Auto Discover Plugins, Auto Load Enabled Plugins or Development Mode. Nothing read plugin_system.auto_discover, auto_load_enabled or development_mode: every enabled plugin was always discovered and loaded. Stored values are kept, and saving the General tab no longer rewrites them to false.
• BackgroundDataService shares the 6-hour "ESPN rejects date ranges" memo with fetch_espn_scoreboard, so a background season fetch no longer spends a doomed range request first once either path has seen a rejection.
• scripts/install_plugin_dependencies.sh installs from the configured plugin_system.plugins_directory (default plugin-repos, where the Plugin Store installs) and also scans plugins/ for dev symlinks. It used to scan only plugins/ and find nothing. A failed pip install is now reported as a failure instead of being hidden by tee.
• scripts/verify_installation.sh no longer fails a healthy install: it checked for the removed web_interface_v2.py and port 5001. It and scripts/verify_web_ui.sh now check port 5000, where the web interface listens.
• scripts/install/install_service.sh --help prints usage and exits without changes. It used to ignore the flag and reinstall and restart every service. Unknown arguments are rejected before anything runs.
• scripts/diagnose_web_ui.sh, scripts/diagnose_web_interface.sh and scripts/debug/debug_web_manual.py apply the launcher's own autostart rule (only an explicit web_display_autostart: false keeps the web interface down), so a missing key no longer shows as disabled. The shell scripts also check web_interface/blueprints/api_v3/, which became a package, instead of reporting api_v3.py as missing.

Docs and developer tools

• docs/REST_API_REFERENCE.md rechecked against every handler: request fields that made documented calls fail (repo_url, action_id/params, files/image_id, font_file+font_family, ?font=, cache key, auto_enable_ap_mode, plugin limit keys) and response shapes are fixed, the removed font-override endpoints are gone, and the 26 undocumented routes (backup, git/auto-update, WiFi radio, Starlark editor, MQTT bridge, status endpoints, skins) are listed. Store search is /plugins/store/list?query=.
• FONT_MANAGER.md no longer tells plugins to read display_manager.font_manager, which does not exist; use plugin_manager.font_manager / BasePlugin._get_font_manager().
• Plugin docs, DisplayManager docstrings and the bundled starlark-apps plugin now all read the display size from display_manager.width/height, which works in fallback mode where matrix is None.
• scripts/dev/dev_plugin_setup.sh link-github <name> links the plugin from a clone of the ledmatrix-plugins monorepo (per-plugin ledmatrix-<name> repositories no longer exist). dev_plugins.json honours github_user, plugins_repo and plugins_branch; dev_plugins.json.example ships and dev_plugins.json is git-ignored. update/status handle monorepo links, and status no longer exits 1 when nothing is broken.
• Rewritten for current behaviour: plugin dependency installation (web service runs as the installing user and installs through safe_pip_install.sh), PLUGIN_CONFIG_ARCHITECTURE.md, MULTI_ROOT_WORKSPACE_SETUP.md; stale app.py line numbers, api_v3.py paths, StreamManager method names, nonexistent version-bump scripts and ledmatrix service user references removed.

3.4.0

Plugin-facing changes since 3.3.0 (tag v3.3.1) not covered further down:

• BasePlugin.get_update_interval() (#555) — return seconds to override the manifest's update_interval at runtime (e.g. poll fast only while a game is live), or None to keep it. Clamped to at least 5 seconds; a raising or non-numeric return is ignored. Called every scheduling tick, so keep it cheap. Older cores never call it. See docs/PLUGIN_API_REFERENCE.md.
• src.common.scroll_config (#523) — turns a plugin's scroll config into a configured ScrollHelper in one place, replacing per-plugin resolution that disagreed between tickers, and warns when a speed won't advance whole pixels per panel refresh. Floor on 3.4.0 to import it.
• Skins are marked unsupported. No current scoreboard plugin builds on src.base_classes, so the skin hook (SportsCore._render_game) never runs. The web UI no longer shows the Visual Skin dropdown, the store hides and refuses "type": "skin" entries, and GET /api/v3/skins reports "supported": false. Saved skin config values still load and save. src/skin_system/ is unchanged.
• Web preview size now comes from src/display_geometry.py, the same computation DisplayManager uses: double-sided setups preview one screen, and a missing chain_length defaults to 2 everywhere (the Starlark magnify default and the sync handshake used 1). The module is core-internal: plugins keep reading display_manager.width/height.
• src.common.font_layout (#539, #565) — load_truetype() is ImageFont.truetype with the layout engine pinned, so text lays out the same whether or not the host's Pillow was built with libraqm; crisp_size() and FONT_PIXEL_GRID give the size a bundled face renders on whole pixels at (sports_card still re-exports them); resolve_asset_path() resolves assets/fonts/... against the install root, not the working directory. Floor on 3.4.0 to import it. Relatedly, DisplayManager now draws text 1-bit (#521), so golden images recorded against 3.3.x may need regenerating.

Install and updates

Weekly automatic updates (#581), off by default. Switching on Automatically check for and install updates once a week on the General tab (or first_time_install.sh --enable-auto-update / LEDMATRIX_AUTO_UPDATE=1) updates the core and then every installed plugin once a week, preferably 2–5 AM local time. It follows the branch the checkout tracks — main on a standard install — so a device gets whatever has merged there, not only tagged releases. See docs/WEB_INTERFACE_GUIDE.md.

• The core step is skipped, with the reason shown, when the checkout has local edits or commits, a rebase or merge is in progress, the branch has no upstream, less than 300 MB is free, or that commit was already rolled back.
• After pulling, ledmatrix-update-verify.service restarts the services and requires the web interface to answer and the display to stay up. If they don't, or the new requirements fail to install, it resets to the previous commit, reinstalls its requirements and restarts again. Anything but success shows under the toggle and as a banner on Overview.
• Plugins update through the Plugin Store even when the core step is skipped, fails or is rolled back. A plugin version whose ledmatrix_min_version is above the device's core is held back, not installed. When the core did update, plugins wait for its health check, and are left alone if that check never reports or the rollback fails.
• No SSH is needed: switching the toggle on restarts the display service, which installs the health-check units (src/auto_update_setup.py, core-internal and not a plugin API).

Installer and service fixes:

• rgbmatrix builds on ARMv6 boards (Pi Zero, Pi 1); an existing checkout is moved forward to the new pin and no longer left root-owned (#577).
• first_time_install.sh grants the web user safe_pip_install.sh, as configure_web_sudo.sh already did, so plugin requirements install where the display service can see them (#579).
• The web interface starts when web_display_autostart is missing or config.json is unreadable; only an explicit false keeps it down (#556).
• Installers render every systemd unit from its systemd/ template, so the boot-time unit-drift warning can clear, non-root installs included (#547).

Scrolling

• Frame pacing (#523). The loop waits only for the rest of each panel refresh instead of a flat 8 ms: 44–46 fps → 100 fps, and slow frames 14% → 0.02%, on a 2×128×64 chain. Sub-pixel blending is off by default again (it shimmered on pixel fonts; Vegas mode still opts in).
• Whole-pixel steps (#545). At a speed scroll_config can render in whole pixels, every frame advances by exactly the same amount, removing about six hitches a second. A loop that can't keep up now scrolls slightly slow rather than jumping.
• The eight sports scoreboards scroll through scroll_config too (#542): the default 50 px/s holds each frame for two refreshes instead of alternating 0 px and 1 px steps.
• Frame stats ignore the pause between scrolls (#582). The Scroll frame stats log line counted the idle wait before each scroll as one frame, inflating max and the stall rate. docs/SCROLL_PERFORMANCE.md now describes the line actually logged.

Plugins

• FontManager registers the bundled tom_thumb font, so plugins no longer need a private loader (#534).
• The test harness's set_scrolling_state() accepts frame_hold, as DisplayManager's does (#534).
• A display() with nothing to draw should return False, the only value the controller skips on; starlark-apps now does, rather than holding a black panel (#534).
• Starlark apps may set render_width/render_height in their config.json to render at their own canvas size instead of Pixlet's 64×32 (#552).
• scripts/render_plugin.py --display-mode <mode> renders one mode of a multi-mode plugin; scoreboards previously rendered blank (#522).
• Scoreboards resolve their own directory under the real plugin loader (declare _PLUGIN_DIR), so 4x6 text snaps to its 7px grid instead of rendering a pixel narrow, and an unreadable schema is logged (#519, #520). DisplayManager loads 4x6 on that grid too (#565).
• The 5x7 BDF face reports a real height, so rows stacked by get_font_height() no longer overlap (#539).
• LogoHelper remembers a missing logo instead of warning every rotation (#548), and the decoded sports logo cache is bounded (#559).

Web interface

• Installed Plugins has search, All / Enabled / Disabled / Updates filters and sort (#540).
• Hardened and polished per the September 2026 audit (#568): utility classes such as .hidden actually exist, focus rings, labels and modal focus trapping, dark theme throughout, no overflow at phone width, and background streams pause when hidden, with first-load JS/CSS down from 1358 KB to 291 KB.
• WiFi Connect works from the LEDMatrix-Setup hotspot: the page is answered before the hotspot drops, and reopening it shows why an attempt failed (#571).
• Pixlet install, the Starlark app store and app toggles work again (#535, #537); the store uses the configured GitHub token and reports a rate limit instead of drawing a blank grid (#541).
• Plugin config: geochron and news saves no longer always fail (#575), the page survives stored values the schema outgrew (#578), the form uses the full page height (#573), and file-manager widgets show the script's error (#574).
• The live status stream reports real disk usage and available memory (#558); a system action refused for want of passwordless sudo says so and names configure_web_sudo.sh (#560).

Tools and security

• CodeQL triage (#561): 129 of 134 alerts fixed. Three were exploitable path-handling flaws in the web interface and are closed; web UI escapers now escape quotes, and URL fields refuse script schemes. Path checks share src/common/path_safety.py (core-internal).
• Home Assistant MQTT bridge (integrations/mqtt_bridge, #538): mode select, stop, power and brightness over MQTT Discovery.
• Tools tab manages the MQTT bridge and the Pixlet editor (#554); the editor stays on loopback when PIXLET_EDITOR_HOST says so.

Fixes

• Updating a plugin whose directory is named for its manifest id (leaderboard, music, stocks, weather) silently did nothing (#536).
• Plugin reconciliation no longer reports working plugins as stale or replaces their config with a stub, and the Overview banner advises each case correctly (#557).
• Two config saves in the same second no longer share one backup, so rollback restores the version asked for (#564).
• On-demand: a second request is honoured without a restart (#534), a pinned request stays on its mode, and restarting mid-session loads every plugin again (#538).
• /health and /display/current report real state, and the preview no longer freezes on a leftover snapshot temp file (#534).

Per-element display customization

Per-element display customization, and the last mile of it into the web UI. A user can set the font, size, colour, position, visibility and alignment of individual display elements per plugin -- and, where a plugin has display modes, separately per mode.

New public API a plugin may import via src.* (floor on the release that ships this):

• src.element_style.layout_offset(config, element, axis, default, mode) and element_color(config, element, default, mode) — the stateless reads the scoreboard helpers share. There were three copies of the offset read and two of the colour read; these are the one implementation, and they carry the element-name aliasing and the per-mode lookup.
• src.element_style.alias_keys(element) — the names one element may be stored under. The style block names elements score_text while the layout block says score, and records/record and status_text/status split seven to two across the published schemas. A lookup tries the exact name first, so this is inert for a config that already matches.
• src.element_style.element_visible(config, element, default, mode), element_align(...) and element_scale(...) — the stateless reads for the three knobs the resolver already understood but no draw path consumed, so an element could be marked hidden in the web UI and still render.
• SportsCoreSharedMixin._draw_text_with_outline(..., element="score_text") — naming the element resolves its colour by name and honours its visibility toggle. Without a name the colour is inferred from font-object identity, which cannot separate two elements sharing a face; that is the case every bitmap font is in, because a freetype.Face cannot be re-instantiated, and it is how a BDF-rendered element silently lost a configured colour. Shared faces now resolve when exactly one sharer has a colour set.
• LogoHelper.load_logo(..., scale=) — applies a user's image scale, and keys the cache on the scaled box so two elements scaled differently cannot be served each other's image.
• src.element_style.native_bdf_size(font) — the one pixel size a bitmap font can render at, or None for a scalable one. The web UI needs this to know whether a size control can take effect at all.
• ElementStyleResolver(config, defaults, mode=...) plus visible, align and scale on ElementStyle. The mode binds to the resolver rather than being passed per call, so a plugin with one instance per mode makes every existing lookup mode-aware by setting one class attribute.
• BasePlugin.styles / styles_for(mode) / STYLE_MODE — the accessor every plugin inherits, so adopting this is no longer a guarded import plus schema discovery plus resolver invalidation in each plugin.
• SportsCoreSharedMixin._get_layout_offset — promoted from the plugins' bundled copies. Each still carries its own, which wins by MRO, so adopting it is a deletion.

Schema and web UI:

• A customization block is now rendered by a composite style editor: one row per element rather than nested accordions, with a tab per declared mode. Plugins that hand-wrote their style blocks get it without a plugin release; x-style-elements and x-style-modes declare it compactly.
• Font fields become a real picker rather than a hardcoded enum, so a font the user uploads is selectable. Bitmap fonts taller than the element's declared size ceiling are filtered out, because a bitmap font ignores font_size and renders at its own size.
• /static/plugin-widgets/<plugin>/<widget>.js serves a plugin's own web-UI widgets. The client half and the docs already existed; nothing served them.

Fixed:

• A bitmap font asked for a size it has no strike for fell back to PressStart2P — a different typeface — rather than to its own native size. 32 of the 35 shipped fonts are bitmap, so this was reachable for most font choices.
• The plugin config form read config_schema.json directly while the save route read it through SchemaManager. Only the latter expands a compact x-style-elements declaration, so a plugin using that form had a customization section that rendered as empty space.
• unshare_element_fonts rebuilt faces through bare ImageFont.truetype, bypassing the layout engine src/common/font_layout.py pins. These were the only two call sites in src/ doing so.
• The form parser compared a schema type to a bare string, so a nullable field (["array", "null"]) never had its indexed colour inputs recombined, and a blank one became [] rather than null.

Removed:

• The Fonts tab's "Element Font Overrides" panel and its three endpoints. They reported success and saved nothing, and the element keys the panel offered (nfl.live.score, clock.time) are read by no plugin, so wiring them to the real FontManager methods would still have changed nothing on the panel. Per-element font choice now lives in each plugin's own config editor.
• "Detected Manager Fonts", which listed every installed font with a hardcoded usage count.
• Two dead client-side config-form renderers in app-shell.js (~580 lines) and the legacy plugins/config_manager.js, superseded by server-side rendering.

3.3.0

Historical note: tags v3.3.0 and v3.3.1 both report __version__ "3.3.0" and both ship src/common/sports_shared.py, so a "3.3.0" floor always means a core with sports_shared.

The release the sports scoreboards floor on to delete their bundled copies. 3.2.0 shipped the unified sports library and made ledmatrix_min_version enforceable; this ships the last three shared modules and completes the store gate, so a scoreboard can now floor here and carry no fallback at all.

New modules a plugin may import via src.* and floor on 3.3.0 for:

• src/common/sports_card.py — settings, colour, font and date helpers for a scoreboard's game_renderer.py. Free functions taking config/fonts explicitly, so nothing about the caller's class is assumed.
• src/common/sports_game_renderer.py — SportsGameRendererMixin: scroll/Vegas card geometry (centre gap, logo slot and cache key, layout offsets, the upcoming-card date and time layout). No __init__ and no state, so adoption is one line on the class statement.
• src/common/sports_shared.py — SportsCoreSharedMixin, SportsLiveSharedMixin, SportsRecentSharedMixin: the sports.py bodies byte-identical in all eight lineage-sharing scoreboards.

All three sit under src/common/ rather than src/base_classes/sports/, deliberately: importing that package pulls core.py → DisplayManager → rgbmatrix, and these are pure logic. Plugins importing them must not acquire a hardware dependency.

Three notes for anyone adopting sports_shared:

• SportsRecentSharedMixin defines __init__. Its bare super() binds to the mixin, so it reaches the host only when the mixin is listed first in the bases. Reversing that order silently skips the host constructor.
• Methods that resolve the plugin's config_schema.json use _plugin_dir(), which walks the MRO rather than reading __file__ — __file__ is now src/common/. It walks because SportsCore is an ABC: a subclass built with type(name, bases, ns) reports __module__ as "abc".
• _get_timezone, _extract_game_details and _fetch_data are byte-identical across the eight but stay in the plugins. The first binds a per-plugin timezone module whose contents differ; the other two are the abstract stubs that define the sport.

The store's compatibility gate is now on every registry-managed route. 3.2.0 gated install_plugin. This release gates the git-pull update path and install_from_url, so a plugin whose floor the core cannot meet is refused after download with no partial directory left behind.

Fixed

• ESPN 403s. site.api began rejecting the User-Agent strings this repo sent on 2026-08-04; every shared-data-source scoreboard returned 403 Forbidden. Requests now send an identifying token with a project URL — browser-style strings and bare custom tokens are both refused.
• Low-memory boards becoming unreachable under load while still answering pings and serving the web UI. Fetched payloads are released after delivery rather than pinned on the completed request for up to an hour, malloc arenas are capped, and log volume and SD writes are reduced. Available memory is now reported in Tools diagnostics.
• A failed logo download pinning a team to a grey box: the placeholder was written under the real logo's filename, so later attempts found a file and reported success without retrying.
• A plugin enabled but never loaded is retried rather than staying absent with error = null.
• ttl now controls cache expiry; abandoned cache writes no longer leave temp files; one cache-cleanup thread per directory rather than per manager.
• Odds are fetched for the games displayed, not the whole schedule window, and a stalled ESPN no longer stalls the whole plugin update.
• Array-item secrets are no longer wiped or logged.
• A restored backup matches the device it was taken from.
• The web UI reports the real error instead of "unknown", rejects non-finite JSON numbers, and stops checkbox groups posting back hidden options.

Added

• display.hardware.orientation for panels mounted upside down.
• Vegas keeps live content in the ticker rather than being preempted by it.
• Schemas can label enum dropdown options.

3.2.0

The first release shipping the unified sports library. This is the version a sports plugin floors ledmatrix_min_version at before deleting its bundled copy of sports.py, scroll_display.py, data_sources.py or base_odds_manager.py — the sunset rule in docs/plugin-development/08-shared-sports-code.md keys on exactly this number.

Adoption is deliberately staged: the modules below ship here, plugins adopt them behind guarded imports, and only then do the bundled copies go away. Nothing in this release changes what an existing plugin loads.

This is also the first release that enforces ledmatrix_min_version. Before it, the floor was advisory — the loader logged a warning and continued, and the plugin store never compared the core version at all, so an update could deliver a plugin that could not run. From 3.2.0 the store refuses such an install. That matters for the sunset rule: a plugin may only delete its bundled fallback once the cores in the field actually enforce the floor, which means waiting for 3.2.0 to be widely installed rather than merely released. See docs/SPORTS_UNIFICATION.md, phase B6.

One deliberate exception: a core reporting a version below 2.0.0 is treated as unknown rather than old and is never blocked. The v3.1.0 release ships __version__ = "1.0.0" (the tag was cut before the string was bumped), and nearly every published manifest floors at 2.0.0 — so blocking on that number would lock those users out of the plugin store entirely.

Added

• src/element_style.py — per-element style resolver backing the x-style-elements config-schema extension. Already consumed (behind guarded imports with classic fallbacks) by the of-the-day, ledmatrix-music, and football-scoreboard plugins.

• Core unit-test CI job enrolling the previously unenrolled suites (skin system, data sources, API extractors, scroll helper, adaptive layout, loader compatibility warning) plus new characterization tests for src/base_classes/sports.py ahead of the shared sports-code unification.

• src/base_classes/sports/ — sports.py is now a package (core.py + modes.py). The import path is unchanged: from src.base_classes.sports import SportsCore still works.

• Nine methods promoted onto the sports base classes from the plugins' bundled copies, plus the override points _favorite_key, _config_schema_path and _font_root and the class attributes FINAL_PERIOD / CLOCK_COUNTS_DOWN. See docs/SPORTS_UNIFICATION.md. A plugin may start calling these once its manifest floors ledmatrix_min_version at the release that ships them.

• src/base_classes/sports/capabilities/ — opt-in capabilities for the sports scoreboards, composed by inheritance rather than gated by config branches inside the base classes:

  • CelebrationMixin — the score/win takeover, merging the goal and score dialects behind the score_phrase() / win_phrase() hooks, the COALESCE_SCORING_SEQUENCE class attribute and the _favorite_key seam. Reads both the celebrate_opponent_goals and celebrate_opponent_scores config spellings. Sports that do not mix it in have none of this code in their MRO.
  • RotationStrategy + a name registry (swrr, weighted, simple, plus register_rotation_strategy for plugin-supplied orderings). Each built-in is verified against a verbatim transcription of the plugin implementation it replaces. An unknown name degrades to simple.

• src/common/sports_scroll.py — SportsScrollDisplay and SportsScrollDisplayManager, the shared scroll orchestration layer for the sports scoreboards, plus native support for global_config['target_fps'] (the bundled plugin copies hardcode ~100 FPS via scroll_delay and never consult the global target). Content building (prepare_scroll_content, _load_separator_icons) is per-sport and stays an override point — see docs/SPORTS_UNIFICATION.md for where the line falls and why.

• src/plugin_system/compatibility.py — the single place that answers "can this plugin run on this core?", shared by the loader (advisory, at load time) and the store (blocking, at install/update time) so the two cannot drift. Reads every spelling published manifests use, including the deprecated versions[].ledmatrix_min. It does not yet evaluate compatible_versions, which is the schema-required field and can express upper bounds; closing that is tracked in docs/SPORTS_UNIFICATION.md before B6.

• scripts/check_release_version.py and a Release version check workflow — assert that a tag, the newest CHANGELOG heading and src.__version__ agree, on pushed v* tags and published releases. Runnable via workflow_dispatch to check a tag before creating it. Added because v3.1.0 was tagged six weeks before src/__init__.py was bumped to match, which is why devices installed from that release report 1.0.0.

Changed

• src/__init__.py bumped to 3.2.0 — the number the sunset rule keys on.
• The plugin store refuses an incompatible install. StoreManager.install_plugin now checks the downloaded manifest's declared floor against src.__version__ and refuses when the plugin needs a newer core. The check sits in install_plugin because _reinstall_with_rollback calls it, so a refused update restores the version the user already had. Refusal requires evidence: an undeclared floor, an unparseable version on either side, or an untrustworthy core version all allow the install.
• A failed install no longer destroys the plugin it replaced. install_plugin previously deleted the existing plugin directory before downloading, so any later failure — a dropped connection, a malformed manifest, or the new compatibility refusal — left the user with nothing. The existing copy is now set aside and restored if the install fails, matching the protection _reinstall_with_rollback already gave the update path.
• web_interface.__version__ re-exports src.__version__ instead of carrying its own hardcoded "3.0.0", which had drifted two majors from the core.
• Live games are no longer dropped when the feed omits a game clock. SportsLive._is_game_really_over previously (in the baseball and UFC plugin lineages) coerced a missing or non-string clock to the literal "0:00" and then treated the game as finished once period >= 4. Baseball has no game clock and period is the inning, so live MLB games disappeared from the scoreboard from the 5th inning onward; UFC was affected the same way. The clock check is now skipped when the clock is unusable, and the period threshold is the per-sport FINAL_PERIOD (hockey ends in P3). Sports whose clocks count up — soccer, AFL, NRL — set CLOCK_COUNTS_DOWN = False and never run the check at all, since 0:00 there means kickoff rather than expiry.

Fixed

• Plugin updates could hang the web request thread. The per-plugin reinstall locks were non-reentrant, and _reinstall_with_rollback holds one across its call to install_plugin — which now takes the same lock to protect the set-aside/restore above. That nesting deadlocked update_plugin → _reinstall_with_rollback → install_plugin, the standard path for every monorepo plugin update. The locks are now RLocks.
• FontManager resolves assets/fonts against the core install root instead of the process working directory, so font loading works when the process starts elsewhere (e.g. the plugin safety harness on CI).
• Hockey events whose competitors carry no statistics array are no longer discarded. The extractor read competitor["statistics"] unguarded, so a KeyError inside the generator dropped the entire event despite valid scores and status; shot counts now fall back to 0.
• Live baseball events that populate status only at the competition level are no longer discarded. The extractor read the event top-level game_event["status"] for the inning; real ESPN events duplicate it, but MiLB events synthesized from the MLB Stats API do not, so the lookup raised a bare KeyError. It now reads the already-validated competition-level status.
• SportsLive._is_game_really_over no longer crashes the live-update pass when a feed sends an explicit null period. None >= FINAL_PERIOD raised TypeError, and the only caller (_detect_stale_games) has no try/except — the same failure shape as the already-fixed null period_text.
• An expired clock spelled "00:00" now ends the game. The check compared the colon-stripped clock against a hand-listed set of literals, which "0000" is not a member of, so a finished game with a two-digit-minute clock stayed on the scoreboard indefinitely. The comparison is now numeric.
• SportsCore._load_fonts resolves assets/fonts through the _font_root() seam instead of the process working directory. Started outside the install root, every scoreboard font silently degraded to PIL's default bitmap face.
• SportsCore._should_log no longer raises AttributeError on the first warning of a run; _last_warning_time is initialized in __init__ rather than lazily by an unrelated method.
• SportsCore._resolve_project_path resolved relative logo directories against <root>/src instead of the repo root after sports.py became a package — the class bodies moved byte-identically but __file__ gained a directory. Both it and _font_root now derive from one _INSTALL_ROOT constant.

3.1.0

Baseline for this changelog. Highlights already shipped at this version: skin system for sports scoreboards (#419), Vegas continuous-scroll overhaul (#423), plugin update surfacing (#421).