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

Shared fetch service (stage 1)

Core's own HTTP fetch paths now go through one service, so the plugins that use them get pooling, merging, host budgets and per-plugin request counts without a code change. Return values, exceptions, cache keys, TTLs and retry policies are unchanged.

• What goes through it. APIHelper.get/post, fetch_espn_scoreboard and its date chunks (src/common/espn_dates.py -- every scoreboard's live, recent and upcoming fetch, and SportsFetchMixin._fetch_season_directly), BackgroundDataService and BaseOddsManager.get_odds. Plugins' own requests calls are not covered yet.
• Shared connection pools. Core sessions with the same retry policy mount one shared adapter, so the odds managers (one per scoreboard league manager), the background service and the APIHelpers reuse one connection pool per host. Headers, cookies and auth stay per session.
• Merged requests. Identical GETs in flight at once (same URL and query, effective headers, timeout and retry policy) go out once; the others get a copy of that response or the same exception. BackgroundDataService's own request opts out (share_in_flight=False): it cancels and replaces fetches, and already merges by cache key.
• Host budgets. Per-host token buckets, fetch_service.rate_limits in config.json (new optional section in the template). ESPN hosts default to 20 requests/s with a burst of 200, far above normal traffic; no request waits longer than max_wait_seconds (2 s). Other hosts are unthrottled.
• Conditional GET. A response with ETag or Last-Modified is kept in a small bounded store (64 entries, 4 MB, 1 MB each) and revalidated; a 304 is returned to the caller as the original 200. ESPN sends neither validator today, so on ESPN this is dormant.
• Counters. Requests, merged, bytes, 304s, errors, HTTP errors, adapter retries, throttled requests and seconds waited, per plugin and per host. Which plugin made a request comes from a context variable the plugin executor and plugin loader set (carried across the background service's and espn_dates' worker threads), or else from the plugin directory on the stack, so a plugin's own threads count too. The display publishes them to the shared cache at most once a minute on change; read them at GET /api/v3/plugins/fetch-stats.
• fetch_service is a core config section (src/core_config_keys.py).

New modules

• src/common/fetch_service.py -- the fetch service above. Core-internal in this release: plugins reach it through APIHelper and espn_dates, and should not import it directly until a plugin-facing API ships (stage 3), so it sets no ledmatrix_min_version floor.

Tooling

• Golden trace tests for the display loop. test/test_run_loop_golden.py runs the real DisplayController.run() against fake plugins on a fake clock (test/_run_loop_harness.py), with no hardware and no real sleeps, and compares which mode was shown, for how long and why it ended with test/fixtures/run_loop_golden/. It has 15 scenarios: rotation, empty and failing modes, dynamic duration, live priority, on-demand (including pinned and resumed after a restart), the schedule and dim schedule, WiFi notices, sync follower and Vegas. The whole file runs in about a second. This is stage 1 of restructuring run(), described in docs/RUN_LOOP_REDESIGN.md. The other part of stage 1 is internal and changes no behaviour: twelve blocks of run() move into named helpers (_dispatch_first_frame, _resolve_durations, _resolve_active_mode, _needs_high_fps, _advance_after_screen and others), and the traces are identical before and after the move.

Fixes

• A plugin whose display() raises now opens its circuit breaker. The first frame of each screen goes through the plugin executor, which caught the exception and returned False. The display read that as "no content" and recorded a success, which reset the plugin's failure streak, so the breaker never tripped. The plugin stayed in rotation and logged a traceback on every screen. The raise now counts as a failure, so after three in a row the plugin leaves rotation until the cooldown ends, the same as a raising update(). The display still moves straight on to the next mode. A hung display() is still recorded once, as a hang.
• A WiFi notice (such as "Connected to HomeNet" or "AP mode on") now shows within about a second of being posted. It was only checked between screens, so a 5 s notice posted during a 20 s screen expired before that screen ended and never appeared. The screen it interrupts comes back in full once the notice ends. When Vegas stops scrolling for a notice, the notice is what shows next, and Vegas resumes after it; before, a rotation screen showed instead and the notice expired behind it. An active on-demand session still holds the panel until it ends.

3.8.0

Live Vegas elements: plugin content that keeps changing while it scrolls (scores on the scoreboards' cards, the flight map's gliding aircraft, the weather radar's loop), with live games kept in the ticker by default. Also stable/beta update channels, the display control socket, the systemd display watchdog, optional web login, ES-module web UI pages, sports consolidation stage 4, and the removal of the 35 plugin APIs deprecated since 3.5.0 (see Removed).

New modules

A plugin may import these via src.* once it floors on 3.8.0 (and should guard the import, since the loader's version check is advisory).

• src/plugin_system/vegas_elements.py -- VegasElement, the unit a plugin's get_vegas_elements() returns (also re-exported from base_plugin). See "Live Vegas elements" below.
• src/plugin_system/testing/vegas.py -- the harness for those hooks: render_vegas_elements, check_vegas_elements, render_vegas_timeline.
• src/common/sports_vegas.py -- what a scoreboard needs for live cards: game_key, game_fingerprint, dedupe_games, VegasCardCache, StickyOdds, finished_games.
• src/common/sports_plugin_host.py, sports_live_scroll.py, sports_display_rules.py and sports_font_path.py -- sports consolidation stage 4; see "New modules (sports consolidation stage 4)" below.
• src/display_watchdog.py, src/plugin_system/plugin_catalog.py, src/plugin_system/plugin_runtime.py, src/plugin_system/field_model.py and the src/ipc/ package -- new core modules (described below) that plugins do not normally import.

Web UI: ES modules and one form model (stage 1)

• The web UI gains a native ES-module layer, loaded with <script type="module"> and served as-is (no bundler, nothing built on the Pi): static/v3/js/core/ (boot.js, registry.js, api.js, facade.js) and static/v3/js/pages/. window.LEDMatrix is its one global: api, pages, notify, escape, widgets and deprecate, the last keeping old window.* names working as aliases that warn once.
• Tab partials can become page modules: a partial whose root says data-page="<name>" carries no inline script, and the page registry calls the page's init once when htmx swaps it in and destroy when it is swapped out, aborting a signal that removes its listeners and cancels its requests. The Cache tab is converted as the reference (js/pages/cache.js); window.deleteCacheFile remains as an alias.
• Static .js files are always served as text/javascript, which module scripts require, and a .js request without the ?v= content version (how modules import each other) is revalidated instead of cached as immutable for a year.
• src/plugin_system/field_model.py: build_field_model(schema, config) describes a plugin's config form as one JSON field model. Nothing renders from it yet; test/test_field_model_parity.py checks it names exactly the form controls and starting values the render_field macro emits, for every schema available (all 46 official plugins, when a checkout is present).
• docs/WEB_FRONTEND_ARCHITECTURE.md: the target architecture, the page-by-page migration order, and how forms switch to the model and to JSON submit behind a flag.

Control socket (stage 1: on-demand)

• The display now serves a control socket, /run/ledmatrix/control.sock. It carries versioned JSON commands, one per line, and every command gets an answer (docs/IPC_CONTROL_SOCKET.md).
  • On-demand start, stop and status are the first commands, plus hello (version negotiation) and ping.
  • Start and stop are acknowledged once the render thread has them queued. The render thread applies them through the same handler as the file mailbox, at its next on-demand check. On a scrolling screen that is the next frame (the mailbox waits up to 0.25 s). On a static screen it is up to 1 s, the same as the mailbox.
  • The server's threads never touch rendering. Garbage, oversize messages and slow or vanishing clients are answered or dropped without blocking the display.
  • New core modules: src/ipc/contract.py, server.py and client.py. They are internal, not a plugin API.
• POST /api/v3/display/on-demand/start and /stop try the socket first. On any failure (the display is stopped or predates the socket, a timeout, a refusal), they write the display_on_demand_request mailbox exactly as before. The response's new transport field says which path was used ("socket" or "mailbox"), and socket_error gives the reason for a fallback. Both paths carry the same request_id, so a request that arrives both ways runs once. The mailbox, and the plugins that write it directly, keep working for at least one more release.
• Permissions. The socket is 0660 and owned by the group the two services already share (the cache directory's group, ledmatrix on an installed device). On Linux the server also checks each connection's SO_PEERCRED: root, the display's own user, or a member of that group. /run/ledmatrix comes from the existing RuntimeDirectory= (#687), or the display creates it as root under an older unit, so no installer or unit change is needed. LEDMATRIX_CONTROL_SOCKET overrides the path for both processes, or turns the socket off with off. A non-root dev run uses a private per-user path under the temp directory.

Scroll speed

• The Vegas Scroll Speed slider now says what the panel will do with the speed it is on, and offers the nearest smooth ones to click. Only speeds that advance a whole number of pixels per refresh look smooth, and which those are depends on the panel (GET /api/v3/config/scroll-speed-advice, built on scroll_config.speed_advice(); it uses the refresh the display measured, not the limit_refresh_rate_hz cap). The slider steps by 1 px/s instead of 5.
• The default 50 px/s no longer snaps to a stepped 48 px/s (2 px every 5 refreshes, 24 fps) on a 120 Hz panel: solve_crisp() now prefers 60 or 40 px/s, which move one pixel at a time. 100 Hz panels are unaffected.

Update channels

• Devices no longer pick up every merge to main. A new setting, auto_update.channel, picks what Update Code and the weekly automatic update install: stable follows the newest release tag (vX.Y.Z by semantic version; pre-releases and other tags are ignored) and checks it out with a detached HEAD, and beta follows main as every device did before. New installs default to stable (config template and installer).
• Nobody is moved backwards. A device running code newer than the newest release, which is any device that pulled main since that release, keeps following main until a release contains its commit, then moves to it and follows releases. A config written before channels existed behaves the same way and is saved as stable when that move happens. Switching from beta to stable says so instead of installing an older version.
• Switch channels on the General tab (Update Channel, under Automatic Updates) or with GET/POST /api/v3/system/update-channel. The Overview update banner compares release tags on stable ("LEDMatrix v3.8.0 is available") rather than commits on main. A detached checkout newer than the newest release gets no banner: Update Code leaves it where it is until a release includes it.
• A move between main and a release tag carries local edits across as the pull's --autostash does, and the automatic update's health check rolls it back to where HEAD was: the branch, or the detached release.

Frozen-panel detection

A render loop stuck inside a plugin's display() left ledmatrix.service "active" with the panel frozen, and nothing noticed: /api/v3/health judged the display by the preview PNG's age, and the automatic update's health check passed "service active plus one HTTP 200".

• systemd watchdog. ledmatrix.service now has WatchdogSec=120 and NotifyAccess=main (still Type=simple). The render thread itself pings systemd over $NOTIFY_SOCKET (src/display_watchdog.py, standard library only), so a stuck render thread stops the pings even while the update worker and Vegas's tick thread carry on. systemd then kills the display with SIGABRT -- faulthandler writes every thread's stack to the journal, which names the plugin -- and restarts it. The process widens the limit to 15 minutes while it starts and while it loads a plugin enabled from the web UI (either can run pip), and sends READY=1 and narrows it back after its first frame.
• Heartbeat. The render loop writes /run/ledmatrix/display-heartbeat.json every 5 seconds (RuntimeDirectory=ledmatrix; tmpfs, so no SD-card writes). /api/v3/health reports it as checks.display_loop: running, stalled (older than 60s; the overall status turns degraded) or not_reported when there is no heartbeat (dev server, emulator, Windows), which leaves the verdict to the older checks as before.
• Update health check. When the display wrote a heartbeat before an automatic update, the restarted display must keep one fresh (30s) for the update to pass; a frozen panel is rolled back. Code that never wrote one is checked as before. The check runs as the copy taken before the update, so this takes effect from the update after the one that installs it.
• Crash loops back off. RestartSteps=4 and RestartMaxDelaySec=2min stretch the delay between automatic restarts from 10s to two minutes, instead of retrying every 10s forever. systemd before 254 (Bookworm) ignores the two lines with a warning. A start limit was ruled out: once tripped it leaves the panel dark and refuses the web UI's Start button and the update rollback.
• Existing installs keep their old unit until sudo ./scripts/install/install_service.sh is re-run (an update never rewrites units; the startup validator warns about the drift). Until then there is no watchdog, but the display creates /run/ledmatrix itself, so the heartbeat, the health check and the update check work straight away.

Security

• The web interface refuses state-changing requests (POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE) sent by another website's page. Any site a LAN user visited could make their browser submit a plain HTML form to http://<pi>:5000 -- CORS does not stop such a request, only hides its answer -- and /api/v3/system/action accepted form bodies, so that page could reboot or power off the Pi, pull code, or reach any other mutating route. A request whose Origin (or, without one, Referer) is not the host it was sent to, or is null, now gets 403 CROSS_SITE_REQUEST (web_interface/origin_guard.py). /api/v3/system/action also refuses a form-encoded or text/plain body (415) unless it carries HTMX's HX-Request header; every caller in the interface already sends JSON.
• Behaviour change for API scripts: clients that send no Origin or Referer -- curl, Python requests, Home Assistant, the MQTT bridge -- are unaffected. A browser page served from a different origin (a dashboard or userscript on another host) can no longer call the mutating API; call it server-side instead. Anyone posting a form body to system/action must switch to JSON. Behind a reverse proxy, forward the original Host, port included (proxy_set_header Host $http_host;; nginx's $host drops the port); X-Forwarded-Host is not trusted. A TLS-terminating proxy needs nothing more: a portless Host matches an https:// page.

Optional web login

• The web interface can require a password, off by default: a device that does not set one behaves exactly as before. Set it under General > Security; from then on every page and API route needs a login (a session cookie, 30 days, kept across restarts) or an API token. Unauthenticated page loads go to the new /login page, HTMX requests get HX-Redirect to it, and API calls get 401 JSON (AUTH_REQUIRED / INVALID_TOKEN). Wrong passwords are rate-limited per address (5 a minute, 30 an hour, through the existing flask-limiter). Log out from the header. Changing the password signs every other browser out. (web_interface/auth.py)
• API tokens for Home Assistant, scripts and the MQTT bridge: create, list and revoke them in the same section, send them as Authorization: Bearer <token>. A token is shown once; only its SHA-256 is stored. Tokens cannot change login settings. The MQTT bridge takes one as ledmatrix_api_token (or LEDMATRIX_MQTT_LEDMATRIX_API_TOKEN, or the Tools tab); it needs one only when it runs on another machine.
• Always open, login or not: requests from the Pi itself (loopback, without proxy headers), the Wi-Fi setup flow (/setup and the Wi-Fi status, scan and connect routes) while the Pi is in access-point mode, static files, the captive-portal probe URLs, and /api/v3/health, which then answers only {"status": "healthy" | "degraded"} to a caller that is not logged in.
• The password hash (werkzeug), the token hashes and the cookie-signing key live in the web_auth section of config/config_secrets.json. No API returns them: GET /api/v3/config/main, GET /api/v3/config/secrets and the raw JSON editor leave the section out, the raw secrets save keeps the stored one, a /config/main save drops a web_auth key, and orphaned-plugin cleanup no longer treats it as a plugin (CORE_SECRETS_KEYS).
• Lost password: sudo python3 scripts/reset_web_password.py on the Pi turns login off (--revoke-tokens also deletes the tokens), or open the interface from the Pi itself.
• New routes: /login, /logout, GET /api/v3/auth/status, POST /api/v3/auth/password, POST /api/v3/auth/disable, GET|POST /api/v3/auth/tokens, DELETE /api/v3/auth/tokens/<id>.

Vegas participation

A plugin now takes part in Vegas mode in one declared way: 'scroll' (its content scrolls by), 'pause' (the scroll stops for its turn and its display() draws it full screen) or 'exclude'. No plugin changes behaviour: one that declares nothing gets exactly what the old hooks gave it, checked against every official plugin.

• BasePlugin.get_vegas_participation() resolves, in order: the user's vegas_participation config value, the manifest's vegas_participation, then the legacy hooks (get_vegas_display_mode() returning STATIC → pause, else get_vegas_content_type() returning 'none' → exclude, else scroll). resolve_vegas_participation() in src.plugin_system.base_plugin is what the core calls; the user's setting wins even over a plugin that overrides the method.
• The Vegas stream manager decides inclusion and pauses through it, and PluginAdapter.get_content_type() is removed (core-internal, now unused). Swap mode no longer drops a plugin's segment for a cycle when its get_vegas_display_mode() raises something other than AttributeError/TypeError: like every other decision point it now treats that as "not paused".
• vegas_participation is a core-owned per-plugin property (an enum with no default) and a manifest field in schema/manifest_schema.json.
• GET /api/v3/plugins/installed reports each plugin's vegas_participation, and the Vegas plugin-order list badges it (Scroll / Pause / Excluded) instead of the old Scroll / Fixed / Static.
• src.deprecation.warn_deprecated() warns once per process for what @deprecated cannot decorate, such as a config key.

Deprecated, removed in 3.9.0 (each logs a warning on first use). Vegas never read any of them:

• BasePlugin.get_supported_vegas_modes() and BasePlugin.get_vegas_segment_width().
• The vegas_panel_count per-plugin setting (warns once per plugin that sets it).
• The SCROLL / FIXED_SEGMENT distinction (vegas_mode "scroll" vs "fixed"): both always scrolled. Documented only; no warning, because official plugins' schemas still offer "fixed".

Plugin store

• The store reads three optional registry fields that ledmatrix-plugins' update_registry.py now publishes (ChuckBuilds/ledmatrix-plugins#579). An older plugins.json without them behaves as before.
  • ledmatrix_min_version: an install or update this core cannot run is refused before anything is downloaded, pulled or moved aside, and the web UI says why ("requires LEDMatrix X or newer…", HTTP 409) instead of "check logs for details". The store card shows a "Needs LEDMatrix X+" badge. The check on the downloaded manifest stays as the fallback (older registries, an explicitly requested other branch, compatible_versions).
  • aliases: the entry's other ids. Update, uninstall and reinstall by the registry id now find a plugin installed under its manifest id (weather → ledmatrix-weather/; likewise leaderboard, music, stocks). Only registry proof counts: the entry's aliases or its plugin_path name, or a folder whose manifest declares one of those ids. A ledmatrix-<id>/ folder with no such proof is never replaced or removed; uninstall and update report "not installed" and log the folder's path. Install and update fetch the registry first when such a folder exists and none is loaded; uninstall stays offline.
  • commit: the monorepo commit that introduced the listed version, shown on the store card and linked to the plugin's source at that commit. Informational only; installs still come from the branch head.

Changes

• The web interface no longer loads or runs plugins (web plugin catalog, stage 1). It built its own PluginManager and loaded plugins into the web process: store installs and updates loaded or reloaded a web-side copy, and config saves and enable/disable called on_config_change, on_enable and on_disable on it. None of that reached the panel. The web process now reads plugins as files through the new PluginCatalog (src/plugin_system/plugin_catalog.py); only the display runs them, and config changes reach them through its config watcher, as they already did.
  • A plugin update, an install of a plugin that is already enabled, or an uninstall that keeps an enabled plugin's config now answers restart_required: true and shows the restart banner, because the running display keeps the code it loaded until it restarts. Before, the update looked applied and the panel kept the old version.
  • The restart banner follows restart_required in any response (POST /api/v3/config/main sends it) rather than the URL that was called.
  • /api/v3/plugins/installed reports loaded, state and error_info as null: the display does not publish them, and the old values described web-side copies. enabled follows the display's rule, so a plugin whose config has no enabled flag shows as disabled (it never ran). vegas_mode is the configured value only.
  • vegas_participation there is the user's setting, else the manifest's declaration, with a new vegas_participation_source (config or manifest). When only the plugin's code decides it (a get_vegas_participation() override or the legacy Vegas hooks) it is null with source runtime: the display derives it, and the web no longer asks a web-side plugin instance.
  • Starlark routes always use their on-disk path. The one place the web process still imports plugin code -- the Starlark helper modules and an oauth_flow action script -- is _import_plugin_code_in_web_process(), until a plugin web-entry contract replaces it.
• The display publishes its plugin runtime state, and the web interface reads it (web plugin catalog, stage 2). A new snapshot in the shared cache (plugin_runtime_snapshot, src/plugin_system/plugin_runtime.py) lists, per plugin, whether the display has it loaded, its lifecycle state, a short redacted summary of its last error, the version it loaded and when. It is written when something changes (at most every 10 s; an ordinary plugin update is not a change) and otherwise once a minute, carries its publish time, and says running: false when the display stops.
  • /api/v3/plugins/installed fills loaded, state and error_info again, from that snapshot, and adds loaded_version and loaded_at. Only a live snapshot counts: when the display is stopped, has not published, or has not refreshed for 3 minutes, those fields are null and the new data.runtime.status says stopped, unknown or stale.
  • data/plugin_state.json is retired: nothing reads or writes it. It held copies of config.json's enabled flags and the manifests' versions, plus install timestamps only GET /api/v3/plugins/state returned, so nothing in it is migrated; an existing file is left in place and can be deleted. The web-side PluginStateManager (src/plugin_system/state_manager.py) that wrote it is removed; the display's state machine in plugin_state.py is now the only PluginStateManager.
  • GET /api/v3/plugins/state is built per request from config.json, the plugins on disk and the display's snapshot (installed, in_config, enabled, version, status, the runtime fields, and installed_at / last_updated from the operation history), with a top-level runtime. It no longer returns config_version or metadata.
  • State reconciliation compares desired state (config.json plus disk) with the display's snapshot. New findings -- enabled but not loaded (with the load error), and loaded at an older version than is installed -- are reported with fix_action: no_action; the unresolved-issues banner is unchanged. StateReconciliation takes config_manager, plugins_dir, store_manager and runtime_source as keywords.
  • Backups list the installed plugins from disk, with enabled from config.json, instead of merging in plugin_state.json. A plugin that only that file still named (not installed, not configured) is no longer listed. Restores are unchanged.

Fixes

• Quieter routine logging. Every rotation logged each mode twice ("Switching to mode", then "Processing mode"), and a mode with nothing to show added "display() returned False" and "No content to display". Those three repeats are now DEBUG; "Switching to mode" stays INFO, and --debug shows the rest. On ledpi this cut the display's journal lines by about 30% (~105 to ~75 per 5 minutes). Each stored line costs roughly 9 KB of SD-card writes through the persistent journal (display at INFO vs WARNING: about 190 KiB/min apart), so the saving is real but small.

• Reinstalling a plugin by its registry id when it is installed under its manifest id (weather in ledmatrix-weather/) no longer deletes it when the install then fails. The safety copy was taken of weather/, which did not exist, and the real install was removed to make room for the download, so a refusal by the compatibility gate left no plugin at all. Uninstalling by the registry id reported success and removed nothing; updating by it said "not installed". All three now find the install.

• On-demand no longer restarts a running display. POST /display/on-demand/start treated start_service (on by default, and what "Preview on display", the on-demand dialog and the MQTT bridge all send) as "restart": it stopped the service, waited 1.5s and started it again, so every request reloaded every plugin and left the panel blank for seconds. The running display already reads the request within a quarter of a second, mid-screen and mid-Vegas included, so the route now only starts the service when it is not running. POST /display/on-demand/stop reads stop_service as a boolean, so "false" no longer stops the service.

• On-demand works for a disabled plugin. The display only loads enabled plugins, so "Preview on display" on a disabled plugin's config page (which says the plugin will be enabled for the preview) failed with invalid-mode. The display now loads the plugin live for the session, without writing enabled to config.json, and unloads it when on-demand is stopped, expires or moves to another plugin. A plugin that fails to load reports on-demand status error with load-failed. A session restored after a restart unloads its disabled plugin the same way; it used to stay loaded until the next restart.

• A stop request now clears an on-demand error. After a failed request, /display/on-demand/status kept reporting status: error for up to two minutes even after a stop.

• One hung plugin no longer stops every plugin from updating. The single update worker waited on each plugin's lock with no time limit, and the render thread holds that lock while it runs the plugin's display(); a display() that never returned (or a first frame still running after the executor's 30s timeout) parked the worker for good, so scores, weather and clocks all froze while the panel kept scrolling. The worker now waits at most 5s (the bound unload_plugin() already uses) and skips that update; the other plugins keep updating. The skip is logged (at most once a minute per plugin) and counted in plugin health as a busy skip (busy_skip_count, last_busy_skip), but it is not a failure and never opens the circuit breaker: Vegas mode holds a plugin's lock for its whole content render, which on a slow Pi can outlast 5s, and a healthy plugin must not be pulled from rotation for that.

• display() calls are timed on every frame. One taking 2s or more is logged (at most once a minute per plugin) and counted in plugin health (slow_call_count, last_slow_call); one that runs past the executor's timeout counts as a hang (hang_count, last_hang) and as a failure to the circuit breaker. A first frame that times out is no longer recorded as a success, and an update() still running after its timeout is recorded as a hang instead of leaving the plugin silently stuck. Only these real hangs count toward the breaker.

• A plugin's on_config_change() no longer runs while its update() is running on the worker thread. It now runs under the plugin's lock; if the lock stays busy past the same 5s bound the change is handed to the update worker, which applies the latest one as soon as the lock frees, and before the plugin's next update() at the latest. The plugin API is unchanged.

• With a Vegas width budget set (max_plugin_width_ratio or a plugin's vegas_max_width_screens), a single image over the budget with no gaps between items -- a map, one long headline -- no longer takes a pass of its own showing four blank columns. The cut landed in the middle of the blank margin trimming leaves at the image's edge; margins are no longer cut points, so such an image is cropped to the budget as intended.

Live Vegas elements (plugin API)

• New plugin hooks for content that can change while it scrolls: BasePlugin.get_vegas_elements() returns VegasElements -- named, fixed-width pieces of Vegas content -- instead of pictures; redraw_vegas_element(key, width, height, at) redraws one without the plugin lock for content that changes with time; and notify_vegas_data_changed() reports data that arrived outside update(). New module src/plugin_system/vegas_elements.py (VegasElement, also re-exported from base_plugin). See "Live Vegas elements" in docs/PLUGIN_API_REFERENCE.md.
• The ticker asks a plugin that implements the hook for elements on its background fetch (under the plugin's lock, on a canvas of its own) and records where each one lands in the strip, in absolute columns a trim does not move (src/vegas_mode/elements.py). Live elements are never trimmed to their ink: each is padded with content_padding black columns either side. Every other path -- the first strip, the render-thread fallback, plugins without the hook -- is unchanged. Swapping redraws into the strip builds on this.
• PluginManager.add_update_listener() / remove_update_listener() / notify_data_changed(): a listener hears a plugin id the moment its update() completes, rather than at the next ~4s Vegas poll.
• New display.vegas_scroll settings: live_refresh (default true; the kill switch), live_max_hz, live_min_interval, live_lead_screens, and a per-plugin core-owned vegas_live. Live elements are off whatever these say under multi-display sync, in swap mode and with offscreen_prefetch off.
• scripts/check_plugin.py checks the element contract for any plugin that implements it (src/plugin_system/testing/vegas.py), and test/fixtures/plugins/vegas-live-stub is a working example.
• Live elements update in place. When a plugin's update() completes, one background worker (src/vegas_mode/live_worker.py) redraws its live elements that are on or ahead of the screen, nearest first, and hands the ones whose pixels changed to the render thread, which copies them into the strip between two frames (RenderPipeline.apply_live_patches, ScrollHelper.patch_columns): at most four patches or two screens of bytes a frame, no drawing and no locks on the render thread. Elements with refresh_hz are redrawn that often while near the screen, through the plugin's lock-free redraw_vegas_element(). The worker also takes over group prefetching once the strip holds a live element, so one thread still does all the drawing; it runs inside the render gate, starts only when a live element is placed, and is restarted if it dies (three times in ten minutes turns live updates off for the run). While live elements exist, the Vegas update tick runs every second instead of every four.
• Web UI: "Update live content while it scrolls" under Vegas mode's Cycle Pacing (display.vegas_scroll.live_refresh).
• Live cards for the scoreboards (shared code). New module src/common/sports_vegas.py: game_key(), dedupe_games(), VegasCardCache (draws a card only when its fingerprint changes) and StickyOdds (keeps a card's odds through a live poll that left them out), finished_games() and with_finished_games() (a game that just went final keeps its card, showing FINAL, where its live card was). SportsScrollDisplay gains make_vegas_renderer() (the override point; a sport that does not implement it keeps its ordinary Vegas content), render_vegas_card(), vegas_separator() and build_vegas_elements(), and SportsScrollDisplayManager gains get_vegas_elements_for(). SportsLiveSharedMixin gains _record_finished_game() / finished_games_snapshot(), so a game that goes final keeps a card to show FINAL on until the hourly recent list takes it over.
• scripts/render_plugin.py --vegas renders a plugin's block of the Vegas strip as the ticker lays it out (live elements, or with --no-live its ordinary content) and writes the live elements' keys and columns beside it. --timeline ROWS stacks the block at successive moments as the ticker would update it in place (--timeline-step, and --timeline-update to run update() between rows). render_vegas_strip() and render_vegas_timeline() in src/plugin_system/testing/vegas.py; the join is now render_pipeline.join_plugin_rows().
• Behaviour change: live games stay in the Vegas ticker by default. display.vegas_scroll.live_in_ticker now defaults to true: the marquee keeps running through a live game, which takes extra turns in it, instead of giving way to the full-screen scoreboard. Existing configs all held the old false, copied from the template, so the first start turns it on once (ConfigManager._migrate_live_in_ticker_default; the previous config is kept as config.json.backup and live_in_ticker_migrated records that it ran). To keep the full-screen scoreboard, untick the new Keep live games in the ticker under Vegas mode; a false set after the migration stays.

Scrolling

• A Vegas strip extension no longer costs a late frame. Appending the next group rebuilt the whole strip (np.concatenate, 2-2.6ms for a 10-14k px strip at 512x64 on a Pi 4) and trimming copied what was left (1.2-1.8ms), so on hdpi every extension frame missed its refresh. The strip now lives in a buffer with spare room (ScrollHelper.STRIP_SPARE_FACTOR): an append writes only the new columns (~0.2ms), a trim only moves the start, and the one full copy happens when the buffer is reallocated, about once every two strip-lengths scrolled. A strip set from outside (the multi-display follower's) is never written through.
• A Vegas strip extension costs the render thread about a third of what it did. Appending the next group and trimming what has scrolled past each rebuilt the strip's PIL image from its numpy array in full (Image.fromarray: 1.7ms for an 8,000px strip, 3.8ms for 20,000px, on a Pi 4 -- twice per extension), though every frame is cut from the array and nothing on the frame path reads the image's pixels. ScrollHelper now builds cached_image only when something reads it, which in Vegas means only a multi-display sync push, and the strip is no longer held in memory twice. Assigning cached_image still stores exactly what was assigned. New ScrollHelper.has_strip() says whether there is a strip without building its image; the frame path and Vegas use it.
• The frame after a Vegas strip extension is no longer late on a Pi 4. The render thread also laid out every plugin block of the new group (joining its rows, measuring the separation between each pair) and pasted the blocks into one image, about 37ms on hdpi against ~3.75ms of slack. The thread that fetches the group now does that as each plugin arrives, and the extension only writes the prepared pixels into the strip (ScrollHelper.append_content takes RGB arrays): 3.2ms. In a 4 x 8 minute A/B soak, extension frames went from 10 of 10 late to 3 of 10.

Tooling

• The frame-timing recorder says which render-thread work a late frame followed. Work done between two frames calls FrameTimingRecorder.note_op(kind, nbytes) and the next presented frame carries the tag; the stats gain op_frames, late_op_frames, op_freezes and op_bytes per kind (additive; the file's schema version is unchanged). Vegas tags every strip compose and extend, and frame_soak.py prints an "after work" table with each kind's own late rate. scripts/render_bench.py can drive the same work on a panel with nothing else running: --strip-screens for a Vegas-sized strip, --patch-bytes / --patch-every / --patch-where for in-place column writes, and --extend-every-screens for appending and trimming on a fixed cadence. See "Soaking a rig" in docs/SCROLL_PERFORMANCE.md.
• scripts/sports_drift_report.py: for a ledmatrix-plugins checkout, counts how many different bodies each method family has across the nine scoreboards' sports.py, manager.py and game_renderer.py, lists the families still identical everywhere and those with one outlier, and with --family ... --diff shows the variants. It is the progress measure for the reconcile-then-promote roadmap in docs/SPORTS_UNIFICATION.md, which this release rewrites. CI runs it against the monorepo's main as a report-only job ("Sports drift report"; never fails the build).

Deprecations

• The 35 plugin-facing methods deprecated in 3.5.0 are now removed in 3.8.0, not 3.7.0: 3.7.0 shipped with all of them still in place, still warning "will be removed in LEDMatrix 3.7.0". The warning, the docs and test/test_deprecation.py now say 3.8.0. They are removed in this release (see Removed, below).
• New scripts/plugin_api_usage.py lists every @deprecated core method and scans core, the plugin monorepo and the registry's third-party plugins for calls and overrides, telling real uses from unrelated methods of the same name. Its output is docs/DEPRECATIONS_3.8.md (linked from docs/PLUGIN_API_REFERENCE.md#deprecated-apis); no plugin uses any of the 35.
• test/test_deprecation.py fails while any @deprecated marker names a release at or below src.__version__, so a release can no longer ship warning about a removal it has already passed.

Removed

The 35 plugin-facing methods deprecated in 3.5.0 (each has logged a warning on first call since, announced for 3.7.0 and then moved to 3.8.0) are gone. The usage scan (docs/DEPRECATIONS_3.8.md, re-run 2026-10-01) found no call or override of any of them in the 46 monorepo plugins or the 8 third-party plugins plugins.json lists, and core's own last callers went with them. A plugin that still calls one gets an AttributeError; docs/PLUGIN_API_REFERENCE.md#deprecated-apis lists what to use instead.

• 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. The private change-detection helpers behind has_data_changed (_has_weather_changed and friends, _is_market_open) went with it.
• DisplayManager: draw_weather_icon, draw_sun, draw_cloud, draw_rain, draw_snow, draw_text_with_icons, get_scrolling_stats, and with them the WEATHER_COLORS table and the private _draw_sun/_draw_cloud/ _draw_rain/_draw_snow/_draw_storm helpers. VisualTestDisplayManager (the plugin test harness) drops its copies of the icon methods too, so a plugin's visual tests fail the way the real display would instead of passing against methods that no longer exist.
• 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, plus the size_tokens attribute and the private _save_overrides and _clear_plugin_font_cache. resolve_font() still applies config/font_overrides.json.
• PluginManager.get_enabled_plugins (check enabled on the entries in plugin_manager.plugins).

Web UI styling: a real Tailwind build

• The web UI's utility classes now come from a generated static/v3/tailwind.css (Tailwind v3.4.19 standalone CLI, no Node) instead of ~500 hand-written rules in app.css. The CSS is built on a dev machine with python3 scripts/build_css.py and committed; the Pi never builds anything. CI's new "Tailwind CSS is up to date" job rebuilds it and fails when the committed file is stale. app.css keeps the theme tokens, components and dark theme, and loads after tailwind.css. The values app.css had customised (darker gray text, emerald/amber button fills, token shadows, font line-heights, keyboard-only focus rings) are kept in web_interface/tailwind/tailwind.config.js.
• Border utilities now draw. border-b, border-t and divide-y set only a width, and nothing gave them a style, so the tab-row underlines and section dividers the markup asks for never showed. They do now.
• 2xl: classes now apply (the hand-written .2xl\:… selectors were invalid CSS): at 1536px and wider the plugin grids show five columns and the page gutters widen, as the markup intended.
• Classes the hand-written file never defined now work, e.g. the teal "configure" badge in Operation History, the button of a purple web_ui_actions card (it had white text on no background), the toggle-switch knob offsets, the slider accent colours and the password strength colours.
• A scrollable container with its own background (the live preview stage, command output in Tools) keeps it. The scroll-hint rule's background shorthand wiped it, so the preview stage rendered white instead of dark.
• Plugin web_ui/ pages no longer load Tailwind from a CDN, which failed in AP mode with no internet. They get a local static/v3/plugin-frame.css with the v2 palette they were written against.

New modules (sports consolidation stage 4)

A plugin may import these via src.* once it floors on 3.8.0. All four hold code the scoreboard plugins carry as identical copies (checked at ledmatrix-plugins 56c4f15), moved without behaviour change under the plugins' own names; each docstring lists what the host class must provide. Nothing in core uses them yet. The plugins delete their copies when they floor on 3.8.0.

• src/common/sports_plugin_host.py — SportsPluginHostMixin, ten helpers of the scoreboard plugin class (manager.py) identical in all nine: _dispatch_switch_refresh (with _SWITCH_REFRESH_MIN_GAP_SECONDS), get_vegas_priority_weight, _favorite_team_is_live, _favorite_scan_targets, _favorite_scan_games, _game_involves, get_vegas_content_type, _dynamic_feature_enabled, _get_total_games_for_manager and _build_manager_key. List it before BasePlugin: two of these override its defaults.
• src/common/sports_live_scroll.py — SportsLiveScrollMixin, the eight manager.py methods that rebuild a live scroll strip mid-cycle without moving the marquee (_live_scroll_needs_rebuild, _preserving_scroll_position, ...), with LIVE_SCROLL_REBUILD_MIN_SECONDS and LIVE_SCROLL_REBUILD_DUTY_DIVISOR; identical in the eight scoreboards with a strip (not ufc). LIVE_VOLATILE_FIELDS stays in each plugin.
• src/common/sports_display_rules.py — SportsCardOptionsMixin (_card_option, _recent_date_text; the eight team scoreboards; list it before SportsCoreSharedMixin) and SportsGameRulesMixin (_filtered_or_all, _effective_live_duration; all nine).
• src/common/sports_font_path.py — resolve_font_path, what every scoreboard's _resolve_font_path (nine sports.py, eight game_renderer.py) returns on a core that ships it: the path as given when it exists, else font_layout.resolve_asset_path.

3.7.0

Sports consolidation stage 3 (#672). No behaviour change: nothing in core uses these yet, and the scoreboards adopt them when they floor on 3.7.0.

New modules

A plugin may import these via src.* (floor on 3.7.0). All three hold code the scoreboard plugins carry as identical copies, moved without behaviour change under the plugins' own method names; each docstring lists what the host class must provide. The plugins delete their copies when they floor on 3.7.0.

• src/common/sports_celebration.py — SportsCelebrationMixin, the score/win celebration takeover drawn by afl, football, hockey, nrl and soccer (_draw_celebration_layout and the palette, backdrop, scenery, confetti and crest steps behind it), plus its colour helpers as free functions: logo_palette, lift_color, cap_luminance, mix_color, scale_color, dim_rgba, rgb_luminance, rgb_saturation, color_distance. Only the drawing: when to celebrate, the phrase and the scenery stay in each plugin.
• src/common/sports_fetch.py — SportsFetchMixin, four SportsCore methods identical in all nine scoreboards: _fetch_season_directly, _background_fetches_espn_ranges, _needs_previous_day and _wants_live_odds (with _LOOKBACK_CUTOFF_HOUR and _LIVE_ODDS_LOOKAHEAD).
• src/common/sports_card_wrappers.py — SportsCardWrappersMixin, the seventeen sports_card delegations the eight scoreboard game renderers carry (_vs_text, _element_color, _format_game_date, ...): the methods SportsGameRendererMixin expects its host to provide.

3.6.2

A fix to src.common.favorite_team_check (#670).

Fixes

• The favourite-team check no longer says the Europa League season has finished between matchdays. Its scoreboard keeps showing the last matchday, and its calendar is a "list" of rounds rather than match days, so neither 3.6.1 rule applied. When every event is past, a round in a list calendar that has not started yet (outside an offseason phase) now draws no conclusion. PLL, the World Cup and AFL, whose seasons are over, are still reported as finished: no round of theirs is still to start. (#670)

3.6.1

A fix to src.common.favorite_team_check (#667). Plugins that drop their bundled copy of it should floor on 3.6.1, not 3.6.0.

Fixes

• The favourite-team check no longer logs "the season has finished" for a league that is still playing. ESPN's default scoreboard keeps showing the last slate after it: MLB's regular-season games two days into the postseason, a soccer league's previous matchday between rounds. When every event is in the past, the check now looks first at the league's phase (a regular season or postseason that has moved past the events shown draws no conclusion) and at a match-day calendar (calendarType "day" with calendarIsWhitelist, as soccer, the NHL and the NBA use), whose next date becomes "nothing on until ". An offseason, or a payload without these fields, is reported as before.

3.6.0

New modules a plugin may import via src.* (floor on 3.6.0). Both are promoted from files the scoreboard plugins carry as copies; the plugins keep their copies as a fallback until they floor on 3.6.0. No other change since 3.5.0.

• src/common/favorite_team_check.py — FavoriteTeamCheck(logger, leagues): checks configured favourite team codes against ESPN once per league, on a daemon thread, and logs why a league shows nothing (a wrong code, with the nearest real one, or a season that has not started). The seven copies (<sport>_favorite_check.py) were byte-identical; this is the same code, with type annotations added.
• src/common/sports_timezone.py — resolve_timezone_name() / resolve_timezone() (plus system_timezone_name()): the timezone a scoreboard draws start times in. The ten copies (<sport>_timezone.py) differed only in two values, which are keyword-only arguments here: plugin_label (named in the warning logged when nothing resolves) and writeback_fixed_in (for a plugin that once wrote "UTC" back into the saved config; None otherwise). Same resolution order and log messages.

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.
• 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.
• src/common/json_body.py — response_json(response): response.json(), parsed by orjson when it is installed (an optional dependency) and by the stdlib otherwise; an orjson parse error falls back to response.json() so requests raises its usual error. Same Python objects either way; a season schedule parses about 1.7x faster on a Pi 4, and the parse holds the GIL (so freezes the display) for that much less time. espn_dates and BackgroundDataService use it; espn_dates falls back to response.json() when it is missing, so the plugins' bundled copies of espn_dates still load on an older core.
• src/common/bdf_font.py — 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.

Also new under src/ since 3.4.0, but internal to core rather than for plugins: src/common/frame_timing.py and src/common/render_gate.py (see Scrolling), src/core_config_keys.py, src/deprecation.py, src/device_location.py, src/font_usage.py, src/matrix_support.py, src/pi5_matrix_support.py, src/redaction.py, src/scan_order.py, src/web_interface/config_arrays.py, and in src/plugin_system/: plugin_dirs.py, repo_urls.py, store_install.py, store_registry.py and store_update.py.

New names in existing modules (a plugin using these must floor on 3.5.0):

• 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).
• src.wifi_manager.get_wifi_status_path() — where WiFi status messages for the display are written (config/wifi_status.json).
• BackgroundDataService.handles_espn_date_ranges (see Sports data).
• FontManager.register_plugin_fonts() takes an optional plugin_dir, and FontManager.forget_manager_fonts() is new (see Fonts).

Deprecated for removal in 3.7.0, later moved to 3.8.0 (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 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.
• Plugin config saves recombine position-keyed inputs for nullable array fields ("type": ["array", "null"]).
• A blank Max Dynamic Duration keeps the stored value instead of failing the Display save with a 500; other values must be whole seconds from 30 to 1800.
• 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.

Sports data, logos and odds

• 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.
• BaseOddsManager.get_odds() no longer returns the cached "no odds" marker ({"no_odds": True}) as if it were odds. A game ESPN had no odds for is cached that way so it isn't re-requested every update; on the next update the cache hit handed the marker back, and callers saw a truthy dict. It now returns None for it, on the cache hit and in the stale-cache fallback after a failed fetch, as the plugins' bundled copies already did.
• Background data fetches retry at one level instead of two. The session adapter retried a connection error three times inside every attempt of the service's own retry loop, so a dead network cost up to 16 connection attempts per request and held one of the few worker threads throughout; now it is the loop's max_retries + 1 attempts. ESPN date-range chunks, which don't go through that loop and skip a chunk that fails, keep a small connection retry of their own so a brief blip doesn't drop a month from a cached season.
• LogoHelper.load_logo_with_download() sizes its placeholder to the scaled logo box, like a real logo (only differs when scale isn't 1).
• The AP Top 25 resolver remembers a failed or empty rankings fetch for 5 minutes, so an ESPN outage no longer costs every scoreboard update a 30s timeout. Its duplicate INFO log line is gone.
• BackgroundDataService runs a cache-hit callback outside its lock, as the fetch path does.
• LogoHelper.load_logo_with_download() waits an hour before retrying a download that failed for a missing logo, instead of retrying (with a 30 s timeout) on every call.
• Restamping a placeholder logo writes the file atomically.
• The odds manager logs cache hits, misses and fetches at DEBUG, and a bad JSON body is logged as a parse error rather than a failed fetch.
• APIHelper keeps cached responses for the cache_ttl it was given, instead of always 300 s.
• Logo scales from 0.1 to 10 are honoured everywhere; values outside that range are clamped.
• LogoHelper and logo_downloader: an empty ESPN logo list counts as a failed download, and the placeholder is written at the requested path.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

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.
• ScrollHelper.set_scrolling_image() accepts RGBA, L and palette images (transparent pixels become black), and a new scrolling image no longer jumps ahead by the time the helper sat idle.
• src.common.frame_timing -- times every frame the display presents, whoever drew it, and writes cumulative counters to /dev/shm. Two tools read it: scripts/frame_soak.py judges a running service (late frames, freezes, where the time goes), and scripts/render_bench.py judges the hardware and render path alone on a synthetic strip. Both fail a run above 0.1% late frames, and both call a loop that never waited for the panel NOT LOCKED. A stall watchdog logs the stack of whatever holds a scroll up for 250 ms or more. See docs/SCROLL_PERFORMANCE.md, "Soaking a rig".
• display.scan_order_compensation ("auto" by default): while something scrolls at one pixel per refresh, one half of each panel is shown a refresh behind the other, which removes the 1px step a 1:N-scan panel shows across its middle. Only for layouts whose row order is known; "off" disables it. See docs/SCROLL_PERFORMANCE.md, "A tear across the middle on fast scrolls".

Display and Vegas

• Vegas scrolls in step with the panel's refresh (#628). With smooth_scroll (on by default) the strip moves a whole number of pixels per presented frame, each held for frame_hold refreshes and timed by SwapOnVSync, the same pacing as the plugin tickers; it used to advance by elapsed time and sleep to target_fps, missing a vsync every few frames. The speed is solved against the panel's measured refresh when that is below its limit_refresh_rate_hz cap. The old sub-pixel blend, which the panel shows as shimmer, is kept as vegas_scroll.sub_pixel_blend (default off). While scrolling, the web preview's PNG is encoded on a background writer instead of the render thread. On a Pi 4 driving 512x64, late frames went from about 6.4% to 0.7%.
• Vegas prepares plugin content off the render thread (#630). A plugin that needed the shared canvas used to be fetched on the render thread, stalling the scroll for as long as it took (320 ms for news, 660 ms for a hockey scoreboard, measured). DisplayManager.offscreen(width, height) gives the calling thread a canvas of its own: image, draw and matrix are now properties that resolve to it inside the block, where update_display(), the hardware half of clear() and set_scrolling_state() / set_frame_hold() do nothing. Background fetches take the plugin's lock, waiting up to 2 s for a running update() and otherwise skipping the plugin that round. A GIL gate (src/common/render_gate.py) pauses the prefetch thread outside a window around each vsync swap, so the render thread finds the GIL free; it needs the rebuilt binding that releases the GIL in SwapOnVSync and stays off (one INFO line per Vegas run) on a stock one. New vegas_scroll keys: offscreen_prefetch and prefetch_gate (both on by default) and switch_interval_ms (experimental, default 0, off). Design in docs/OFFSCREEN_RENDERING.md.
• On-demand requests, the display on/off schedule and brightness take effect within about a quarter of a second instead of at the next screen (#618). A screen can stay up for a minute and a Vegas iteration for 240 s, so an on-demand request during Vegas waited for the iteration to end and a brightness save mid-screen could be lost. Vegas now stops for an on-demand request and for the display being scheduled off, and a brightness change re-sends the current frame. Plugin enable/disable, screen durations and Vegas settings still apply at the next screen.
• The Rotation & Durations page takes effect (#605). A saved display.display_durations value now wins over the plugin's own duration; the plugin was asked first, and every plugin inherits get_display_duration(), so saved values did nothing. The page shows an unsaved screen blank with the plugin's own duration as the placeholder (it showed 30 where the real default is 15), and saving a blank removes the override. Durations saved before this now apply.
• Vegas settings reach a running scroll (#605): they are queued when display.vegas_scroll changes (unrelated saves don't rebuild the strip) and also applied while Vegas is stopped. The sync follower's scroll-speed default (75) now matches VegasModeConfig's (50). The Vegas live-priority scan is throttled to 4 Hz.
• DisplayManager.defer_update() from a plugin's update thread no longer loses queued updates while the render thread processes the queue; the queue is locked, and the queued callables still run outside the lock.
• Behaviour change: when display.hardware.limit_refresh_rate_hz is missing from config, the panel is now capped at 100 Hz (the config template's value) instead of 90 Hz. Scroll pacing already assumed 100 Hz in that case, so it now matches what the panel does. Configs that set the key (every config migrated from the template) are unaffected.
• A sync follower adopts the leader's scroll image between frames on the render thread, instead of the TCP thread swapping the image, array and width while a frame is being drawn.
• update_display() errors are logged once with a traceback, then at most once a minute with a count, instead of an untraced line every frame. Several swallowed exceptions in DisplayController now log at DEBUG.
• The repo-root display_controller.py now runs run.py (the real entry point), so it gets run.py's -e/-d flags, logging setup and sys.dont_write_bytecode.
• Vegas: a plugin set to vegas_mode: "static" pauses the scroll for its turn again. The pause was triggered by peeking at the front of a segment buffer that continuous scrolling (the default) never advances, so a static plugin paused only if it happened to be first, once, at startup, and otherwise scrolled past as ordinary content; swap mode had the same problem for any static plugin not first in its cycle. The render pipeline now marks where each static plugin's turn falls in the strip and the scroll pauses when it gets there. The pause runs the plugin's display() under its plugin lock, and a static plugin's content is no longer rendered for the strip.
• The display loop no longer spins at 100% CPU when no enabled mode has anything to show (for example, only a sports plugin enabled in its off-season). After one full rotation of empty modes it checks one mode per second until something shows; live content still takes over at once.
• Stopping ledmatrix.service runs the controller's cleanup (SIGTERM now takes the Ctrl-C path).
• Turning Vegas on in the web UI works without a restart when it was off at startup.
• Vegas comes back after live content interrupts it. It stayed paused, and the display fell back to normal rotation until a restart.
• A day with dimming turned off in a per-day dim schedule stays at normal brightness. Before, brightness went back to dim for most of each minute.
• Stopping on-demand after a second request resumes rotation where it was first interrupted, not at the first request's screen.
• Turning Vegas off and on no longer shows content prepared for the previous run, including plugins disabled in between.
• How long a Vegas iteration runs is timed with the monotonic clock, so an NTP clock step on a Pi without an RTC doesn't cut it short or stretch it.
• The sync status file is removed when the display service stops, and at startup in standalone mode, so the web UI no longer reports a peer from an earlier run. Concurrent writes each use their own temp file.
• render_gate.swap_releases_gil() delegates to frame_timing.binding_releases_gil() instead of duplicating it.
• Vegas max_cycle_duration defaults to 240 s when unset, as documented (it was 600 s). The Vegas defaults are now defined once.
• The display controller stops Vegas mode on shutdown.
• Startup validation warnings are logged once, not twice.
• Vegas logs one INFO line per plugin-list refresh.
• run.py -d shows display_manager debug output.
• Removed: the Vegas staging buffer that was never filled (swap_buffers(), and staging_count / current_index in get_buffer_status()), unread ContentSegment fields, and geometry.find_blank_cut().

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.
• web_interface/blueprints/api_v3/plugins.py (3,285 lines) is split by area into plugins.py (installed list, enable/disable, plugin actions), plugin_store.py, plugin_config.py, plugin_assets.py, plugin_health.py, plugin_operations.py and plugin_calendar.py. Pure move: every function body and route decorator is byte-identical, and URLs and endpoint names are unchanged.
• Plugins installed as ledmatrix-<id> (or in a directory not named after their id) work in the installed list, the update button, recorded versions, the plugin config form and plugin web UI pages. Those routes built plugins_dir/<id> themselves instead of asking the plugin manager.
• Uploading several plugin images checks every file before saving any, so a rejected file no longer leaves the others saved; the images' .metadata.json and the calendar plugin's credentials.json are written atomically, and the credentials upload no longer returns the server's absolute path.
• "false" sent as a string no longer counts as true when toggling a plugin (including Starlark apps) or starting on-demand mode (pinned, start_service); force on the AP-enable route is parsed like every other WiFi boolean ("yes" and 1 now force).
• The live-preview stream starts a new broadcast thread for a client that connects while the previous one is shutting down; that client got no updates.
• The web server's log filter no longer raises when werkzeug logs with exc_info=True.
• The raw secrets editor's save errors carry error_code like the main config's; the asset delete route answers 400 for a missing body instead of 415/500. Dead code removed: an unused manifest scan on each Plugins-tab load, backup routes' duplicate catch-alls, redundant imports.
• A plugin's own config widget (/static/plugin-widgets/<id>/<widget>.js) is requested with ?v=<plugin version>, so an updated plugin's widget reaches browsers instead of the copy cached as immutable for a year.
• A failed installed-plugins reload after a toggle, install or uninstall shows one error, not a second generic "unexpected error" toast.
• The timezone picker on the General tab renders again when the tab is reloaded in the same page session.
• Removed dead code: the plugin-action button's six plugin-id fallbacks (the button always passes its id) and its [DEBUG] logging, window.currentPluginConfig (never set to anything but null), the file-upload widget's JSON delete branch (its endpoint never existed), unused PluginAPI / PluginInstallManager / PluginStateManager helpers, loadPluginWidgetsFromManifest, no-longer-reachable fallbacks for a stale install_manager.js and a missing LEDVisibility, and 13 unused CSS utility rules.
• The Logs tab's "Now showing" no longer reads "unknown" when one screen stays up longer than 2 minutes.
• A network failure fetching GitHub repo info logs a warning, not an error.
• The Operation History plugin filter lists installed plugins (it showed one option, "plugins").
• Ctrl/Cmd+S submits the active tab's visible form (with its validation) instead of the first form in the page; it does nothing inside a dialog or on a tab without a form. The Ctrl/Cmd+R override (the browser's own reload) and the textarea auto-resize (no textarea exists at load) are removed.
• Tools tab actions and diagnostics show the server's error message; only a non-JSON error falls back to HTTP <status>.
• An uninstalled plugin no longer reappears in the installed list: writes through PluginAPI clear its 5s GET cache, and Refresh and the post-uninstall reload bypass both list caches.
• Plugin widgets load from /static/plugin-widgets/ only; the two other paths it tried have no route.
• The raw JSON editor escapes the parse error, and the slider widget escapes its value, min, max and step.
• Removed unused array-of-objects and key-value helpers from plugins_manager.js (about 640 lines, no callers) and a redundant ?v= on its script tag.
• Plugin tabs show the manifest's icon: /api/v3/plugins/installed now includes it.
• POST /api/v3/starlark/apps/<id>/toggle goes through the same code as /plugins/toggle: "false" disables, a failed save no longer leaves the running app out of step with disk, and a loaded app with no manifest entry no longer answers 500.
• /api/v3/ JSON responses are sent Cache-Control: no-store, so a reload right after an install, toggle or Wi-Fi connect shows the new state. Non-JSON files served through the API keep the 5 s cache.
• Startup plugin validation no longer gives up on a null plugin block, and plugins are discovered once at startup instead of twice.
• A plugin save drops repeated entries in lists whose schema says uniqueItems, instead of failing validation.
• /api/v3/health reports the real plugin count.
• A malformed vegas_plugin_order or vegas_excluded_plugins is refused with a 400 and nothing is saved. It used to wipe the saved list.
• The per-plugin health and metrics routes return the display service's latest state.
• Resetting a plugin's config takes a backup first and reports a failed save.
• System metrics that can't be read are null everywhere: cpu_temp off a Pi, and every metric without psutil, where /system/status now answers 200 instead of 503.
• /plugins/store/refresh no longer claims a commit-metadata refresh it doesn't do.
• The plugin-config list repair code is in one place, src/web_interface/config_arrays.py.
• Cache tab errors no longer show up in the Logs tab.
• A tab that fails to load shows "Try again" instead of a skeleton that never goes away.
• Plugin Store search and registry errors appear as a notification, and the Plugin Manager stays on screen.
• The image schedule button works on uploaded images, and the editor stays open while you edit.
• A failed plugin toggle moves the switch back.
• Each save shows one notification; a failed Durations save says it failed.
• Stats the server can't read show --.
• New window.LEDEscape (html, attr, jsStringAttr) replaces about 30 copied escapers. window.escapeHtml and window.escapeAttribute remain as aliases for plugin pages.
• 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.
• /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.
• Installing a Starlark app works on a fresh install (#604). starlark-apps/ is created by whichever service reaches it first, and on a fresh install that was usually the root display service, so the web interface could not write to it and every install path answered "Failed to install from repository". The display service now hands the directory and its contents to the checkout's owner on every start (a no-op when not root or when the checkout belongs to root), which also repairs devices already affected; a permission error from the install routes names the directory and the fix.
• Clicks on plugin cards reach handlePluginAction (#605). Every click took a copied fallback that asked twice before uninstalling and sent Starlark app uninstalls to POST /plugins/uninstall instead of DELETE /starlark/apps/<id>. A failed plugin toggle no longer always says "A plugin operation is already in progress".
• The web interface starts with an absolute plugin_system.plugins_directory (#616); it crashed at import with NameError: project_root.
• Stopping a Pixlet editor that ignores SIGTERM restarts the display instead of answering 500 and leaving the panel dark (#625).
• Removed dead routes and files (#609): POST /plugins/authenticate/spotify and /ytm (the music plugin runs its auth scripts through web_ui_actions), POST /plugins/of-the-day/json/upload and /json/delete (they used the wrong plugin id), js/plugins/store_manager.js, js/config/diff_viewer.js and js/htmx-sse.js, and web_interface/run.sh. htmx-config.js no longer replaces console.error / console.warn, which hid some real errors.

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.

Wi-Fi

• WiFi status messages reach the panel (#605). The display controller looked for wifi_status.json one directory above the repo; both sides now use wifi_manager.get_wifi_status_path(), the file is written atomically, and the plugin that resumes afterwards redraws the whole panel.
• The captive-portal checks (/generate_204 and friends) also detect an access point brought up through NetworkManager, the fallback enable_ap_mode uses without hostapd; only hostapd was checked, so phones on that AP were told the internet worked.
• The WiFi monitor daemon re-reads wifi_config.json when it changes, so the "auto-enable AP mode" toggle takes effect without restarting the daemon.
• Disconnecting from WiFi in the web UI no longer runs an AP-mode check that could never enable the AP; it only added seconds of waiting. The daemon still enables the AP after its grace period.
• The WiFi status message file follows each WiFi manager's own config directory, and the config path falls back to this checkout rather than /home/ledpi/LEDMatrix.
• A wrong Wi-Fi password is reported as one again ("Incorrect password for ..."); the fallback that restores the old network or brings up the setup AP was replacing the signal.
• Wi-Fi disconnect takes the saved connection profile down.
• wifi_config.json is written atomically, and a save that fails now gets a 500.

Fonts

• Fonts tab: the preview endpoint renders BDF fonts with the panel's own rasterizer instead of refusing them. (The Fonts page still skips the request for .bdf; enabling it there is a separate template change.)
• A plugin font declared as a .zip URL is served as the font extracted from it after a restart, instead of registering the archive itself. Font downloads time out after 30s and land in the cache only once complete, so an interrupted download is retried rather than served forever.
• BDF fonts: FontManager.get_font() and element_style.load_font() no longer hand one freetype.Face to every thread. BDF faces come from load_bdf_face, which already caches them per thread; TrueType fonts are cached as before. element_style's font cache is locked (a concurrent eviction could raise KeyError).
• FontManager.clear_cache() and unregistering a plugin's fonts bump cache_generation, so cached layouts are rebuilt.
• plugin:// fonts load from the plugin's own install directory. FontManager.register_plugin_fonts() takes an optional plugin_dir.
• Bundled font paths no longer depend on the directory the process was started from.
• 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.
• 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.

Security

• 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.
• Installing from a URL (and a registry install whose manifest renames the plugin) refuses a plugin id that isn't a single safe name, so ../x can no longer delete and replace a directory outside the plugins directory.
• Plugin uninstall and config reset refuse core config sections (display, schedule, ...) and ids with path parts. Uninstall still cleans the config of a plugin whose directory is already gone.
• A config field marked x-secret whose value is an object or array is saved to config_secrets.json, not to config.json in plain text.
• Restoring a backup onto a device without config_secrets.json, wifi_config.json or ytm_auth.json creates them with mode 640 instead of world-readable 644.
• Backup export skips a plugin manifest.json that isn't a JSON object instead of failing, and two exports in the same second no longer share a temp file or overwrite each other (the second gets a -2 suffix).
• Every font that ships in assets/fonts/ is protected from deletion; MatrixChunky8X, MatrixLight6X, MatrixLight8X and ic8x8u could be deleted from the Fonts tab.
• The raw config and secrets editors, and endpoints using validate_request_json, answer 400 for a JSON body that isn't an object.
• 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.
• Wi-Fi passwords are no longer stored in config/wifi_config.json (#608). WiFiManager appended every joined network's SSID and password, in plain text, to saved_networks, and nothing read them back (NetworkManager keeps its own credentials). Loading the config now drops a saved_networks key and rewrites the file, so passwords already on disk are removed.
• The installers no longer grant the web user passwordless root on display_controller.py, start_display.sh and stop_display.sh (#606). Those files are owned by the user, so the web user could rewrite them and run them as root; nothing ran them through sudo. Existing devices keep the old rules until the installer or configure_web_sudo.sh is run again.

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.
• A plugin that is reloaded (switched off and on again from the web UI) imports its own modules again, not another plugin's. Plugins import their own files by bare name (from sports import ...), which resolves to the first plugin directory on sys.path that has the file; the loader only added a directory that was missing, so a reloaded plugin's directory stayed behind any loaded since. On a Pi, re-enabling UFC with hockey running failed with "cannot import name '_status_is_final' from 'sports'". A loading plugin's directory is now always moved to the front.
• src/plugin_system/store_manager.py (2,977 lines) is split into mixins: store_registry.py (registry, GitHub metadata, search, manifest validation), store_install.py (install paths and dependencies) and store_update.py (updates, rollback, local git state). PluginStoreManager is still imported from store_manager.py and has exactly the same methods and attributes; every method body is byte-identical.
• Unloading a plugin waits (up to 5s) for an in-flight update() before running cleanup()/on_disable(), and an update that finishes after the unload no longer puts the plugin back to ENABLED.
• A plugin whose load fails after its module was imported (constructor, validate_config() or on_enable() raising) no longer leaves that module cached: fixing the plugin and reloading it runs the new code without a restart. Its font registrations are dropped too.
• POST /api/v3/plugins/limits/<id> answers 400 for a limit that isn't a non-negative number (a string limit used to make every later update of that plugin raise). A bad cached limits record is ignored with a warning instead of raising.
• The config schema is found for a plugin installed as ledmatrix-<id> or in a directory named differently from its manifest id, resolved the way the loader resolves it (plugins/ is still searched before plugin-repos/). A plugin with no schema is logged once at DEBUG instead of a warning on every lookup.
• Installing from a URL over an existing install sets the old copy aside and restores it if the move fails, under the same per-plugin lock as a registry install.
• The operation queue refuses a second operation for a plugin whose first is still waiting (a double-clicked Install ran twice), and no longer keeps every finished operation in memory.
• get_vegas_render_width() reads display_manager.width first, as plugins are told to.
• Store and state files are read as UTF-8 regardless of the system locale.
• Docs: update_interval in config.json sets the scheduler's cadence only for a plugin whose manifest has none (TROUBLESHOOTING, PLUGIN_CONFIGURATION_GUIDE). The health/metrics reset and limits routes note that they only change the web process's view.
• A plugin whose on_enable() raises is no longer left registered: the next load retries it instead of reporting "already loaded" for a plugin that never ran.
• One plugin's get_info() raising no longer breaks the installed-plugins list; it is logged and shown with empty runtime info.
• plugin_state.json and the operation history are written atomically (temp file + rename) under their lock, so concurrent saves or a failed save can't leave a truncated file.
• Plugin dependency installs run one pip at a time during parallel startup loading.
• A failed store download no longer leaves its extraction directory in the temp dir.
• Test doubles: draw_image() on MockDisplayManager, VisualTestDisplayManager and BoundsCheckingDisplayManager now emits a DeprecationWarning — the real DisplayManager has no such method; use display_manager.image.paste(img, (x, y)). MockDisplayManager.draw_text accepts the real signature's small_font/centered and default x/y, and VisualTestDisplayManager logs draw errors at WARNING.
• Removed the unused PluginOperationQueue.get_active_operations().
• Updating a plugin that was installed from a ZIP no longer tries to reinstall it from the LEDMatrix repository's own URL.
• Repository URLs with .git in the middle are no longer mangled. The URL helpers now live in src/plugin_system/repo_urls.py.
• Installing from a URL works when the repository's only branch isn't main or master.
• A missing required config field is reported once, by name.
• A plugin that went over max_memory_mb once is no longer refused on every call after that.
• reload_plugin reads the manifest from the plugin's discovered directory.
• Removed: last_display from plugin state info and get_last_display() (nothing recorded them); PluginOperationQueue's history_file and lazy_load arguments; and data/plugin_operations.json, which nothing read.
• 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.

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.
• APIHelper's rate limit and the display-sync heartbeat/leader timeouts measure elapsed time with time.monotonic(). A wall-clock step (NTP correcting a Pi with no RTC) could stall API requests for as long as the step or fake a sync timeout. get_request_stats()['last_request_time'] is still wall-clock time.
• sudo_remove_directory() tries each bash path the sudoers rule might name, as install_requirements_file() already did.
• An element's saved layout scale equal to its schema default is no longer treated as a user choice when the default is declared under an alias (score for score_text).
• CacheError/ConfigError/PluginError/DisplayError no longer write their key into the caller's context dict; the JSON log formatter stringifies values it can't encode instead of dropping the record.
• Removed ErrorAggregator's unused JSON export (export_path, export_to_file()); nothing called it. Docstring fixes in validate_file_upload, StartupValidator.raise_on_errors, DisplaySyncManager.set_on_new_cycle, dynamic_team_resolver and config_arrays.
• /api/v3/errors shows each exception's real stack trace instead of NoneType: None.
• Backups record src.__version__.
• Removed: BackgroundDataService's queue_size stat and clear_completed_requests().
• 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.
• Fixed a memory leak in the display service (#605): ErrorAggregator appended every plugin in the time window to a pattern's affected_plugins on each repeat (3,000 errors from three plugins reached 2.5 million entries).
• An expired cache record is refused without being parsed (#633). CacheManager.set writes timestamp and ttl ahead of data, and DiskCache.get reads the first 256 bytes to decide staleness, with the same rules as before. A 53 MB MLB season file used to be parsed in full (about 1.8 s holding the GIL on a Pi 4, freezing the display) only to be thrown away. Files in the old layout are parsed as before and convert when rewritten.
• Cache internals (#613): CacheManager delegates memory-tier cleanup and stats to MemoryCache; list_cache_files no longer holds the memory lock during directory I/O; BackgroundDataService.get_sport_cache_key() formats the key instead of building a whole CacheManager (and probing the cache directory) on every call; the unused request queue is gone, and priority= is accepted and documented as ignored.

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.
• A hand-edited non-object auto_update value reads as off instead of raising at startup, and a failed result write no longer leaves a temp file behind.
• Overview "Check Updates" asks for the same confirmation as "Update Code" and shows the server's message. Both, and the Tools tab's git pull, show the restart-pending banner when the update needs a restart.

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.
• check_system_compatibility.sh treats Python 3.13 (what Trixie ships) as supported and anything below 3.10 as an error.
• configure_web_sudo.sh run as the web user keeps the reboot/poweroff rules.
• check_system_compatibility.sh no longer reports installed packages as missing.
• 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.
• one-shot-install.sh's retry() retries (#606). It read $? after !, which is always 0, so a failed command ran once and was reported as a success. It now tries three times and returns the command's status; both apt steps still warn and continue after their retries, and a clone that keeps failing stops the install sooner, with its own message.
• One generator for the web sudoers rules, scripts/install/lib_sudoers.sh, used by first_time_install.sh and configure_web_sudo.sh (#622); the two copies had drifted.

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. (scripts/verify_web_ui.sh, scripts/diagnose_web_ui.sh and scripts/debug/debug_web_manual.py were later deleted as unreferenced; see Docs and developer tools.)

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.
• A mypy ratchet in CI. mypy-clean.txt lists the 71 modules under src/ that type-check clean, and the new "Type check (mypy ratchet)" job runs python scripts/check_types.py (mypy 1.20.2 on exactly those files) so they stay clean; add a module when you make it clean (see CONTRIBUTING.md). The manual pre-commit mypy hook runs the same script. 35 modules were made clean for it with annotation-only fixes, no behaviour change. Their public signatures only widened (declared_min_version() now says it returns the manifest's value as-is, Any); DynamicTeamResolver._rankings_cache is annotated as the abbreviation-to-rank dict it holds. mypy.ini treats numpy and orjson as Any, so it parses with python_version = 3.10 against numpy 2.3+ stubs and gives the same result whether orjson is installed or not.
• CI runs the web UI's DOM test suites (jsdom against the real server-rendered pages and API) in a new Web UI JS tests job, with the web interface started in emulator mode; REQUIRE_DOM=1 makes a suite that can't run fail instead of being skipped. Two suites that had gone stale were fixed: the Tools suite now installs LEDEscape the way base.html does and supplies sample Starlark apps when the server has none, and the Store suite no longer assumes the registry has 48 plugins or fewer.
• CI installs web_interface/requirements.txt too, so flask-limiter, flask-compress and the web floors are tested. test_api_helper_does_not_hand_set_brotli now checks what it meant: core doesn't add br itself, and requests may advertise it when a brotli decoder is installed.
• All Discord links point to the LEDMatrix server's invite.
• pytz may be any release before 2027, so current timezone data installs; requirements-test.txt caps psutil below 7 like the runtime requirements and allows pytest-cov up to 7.x (checked against pytest 9 with the CI coverage run).
• The Claude GitHub Actions workflows pin anthropics/claude-code-action to a commit SHA like the other actions.
• mypy.ini parses again. A multi-line exclude and trailing comments on values made mypy refuse the whole file, so none of its settings applied and the pre-commit hook failed with "Missing target". The mypy hook is now manual (pre-commit run mypy --hook-stage manual) while the ~500 existing type errors in src/ are paid down.
• .gitignore ignores everything in config/ except the templates; ytm_auth.json, saved_repositories.json, wifi_status.json and font_overrides.json weren't ignored.
• .sh and .service files are always checked out with LF line endings.
• The Claude code-review check is skipped on pull requests from forks, which get no secrets and always failed it.
• Doc fixes: emulator guide (Python 3.10+, emulator_config.json isn't in the repo), README's nonexistent "API Metrics" feature, a stale route count, and missing index entries for the scroll-performance and offscreen-rendering docs and the frame-soak and render-bench scripts.
• src/common/README.md lists frame_timing, json_body and render_gate.
• New scripts/README.md lists every script.
• 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.
• Deleted 13 scripts nothing referenced (#607): utils/cleanup_venv.sh, utils/clear_python_cache.sh, install/migrate_config.sh, install/debug_install.sh, debug/debug_web_manual.py, diagnose_web_ui.sh, verify_web_ui.sh, fix_internet_connectivity.sh, diagnose_plugin_permissions.sh, dev/validate_python.py, download_nba_logos.py (with README_NBA_LOGOS.md) and setup_plugin_repos.py, all under scripts/; also docs/archive/ and PLUGIN_IMPLEMENTATION_SUMMARY.md. config.template.json no longer carries plugin_system.auto_discover, auto_load_enabled or development_mode, which nothing reads (existing configs keep them). About 20 docs had stale claims corrected against the code.
• test/test_js_unit_suites.py runs every test/js/unit/*.js suite under pytest; CI used to run one of the eight (#605).
• New test 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, so plugins can use it on machines with no panel library.

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.
• Unused src.common modules and plugin-system helpers (#608): src/common/config_helper.py, display_helper.py, game_helper.py, utils.py and error_handler.py (its re-exports leave src.common's __all__), src/plugin_system/health_monitor.py (PluginHealthMonitor, whose loop did nothing; PluginHealthTracker is unchanged), and src.plugin_system.get_store_manager / __api_version__. Nothing in core, the scripts or the plugin monorepo imported them. APIHelper, TextHelper, ScrollHelper, LogoHelper and the adaptive-layout exports of src.common are unchanged. The same change removed unused methods from ConfigService, PluginStateManager, PluginManager, PluginExecutor, PluginLoader, PluginStoreManager, VegasModeConfig and DisplayController; none had callers in core, the scripts or the monorepo.

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).