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

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

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

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).