homeassistant_espscreen/docs/TEST_RESULTS_0277.md

Test results app 0.2.77 / firmware 0.2.64 (2026-09-18)

Max asked for a media card "like Spotify or Apple Music now playing" instead of the plain card with three text keys and a thin volume slider, with the album cover through the camera-image route, working as the card behind a media tile, as a tile over the whole page, and in the light and the dark look. Then: the CYD gets the new card without the picture ("te risky"), a player does not always have a picture, and renders first so he could approve the look. See CHANGELOG 0.2.77. Built on 0.2.76 (bdb1f12).

What changed

• components/smart_display/media_card.h (new): the card's geometry and words, free of LVGL. A tall area (the Guition's card) stacks cover, title, artist · album, the bar row (elapsed | bar | total on one line), the keys (previous 52, play or pause 64 on the accent, next) and the volume row. A wide area (the CYD's card, a tile over the whole page) puts the cover at the left with the column beside it; what does not fit goes in order: the artist line, the times, then the cover shrinks. tests/test_media_card.cpp checks every shape for overlaps and order.
• runtime_tiles.h: render_media_detail (the card), render_media_full (the tile over the whole page, parts in w.extra), media_action shared by both (20 play/pause, 21 previous, 22 next, 23 mute, 24 turn on), the card's key handler pulled out of detail_button into detail_command, media_progress moved by tick() once a second, and the cover: cover_want/cover_ready/cover_tick/cover_offer around one camera_view::Feed that loads a link once (once, loaded), owned by the card or by a tile slot and dropped when the owner goes; a camera full screen takes the shared image buffer and the cover comes back after. The camera answer parser accepts t: cover. The palette pass leaves the media tile's parts alone (it painted them the card's grey). A player's state falls back to the screen's own word ("Playing") when Home Assistant sent none.
• One picture at a time (asked by Max after approving the renders: "two images at once, is that too much?"). An alert already closes every card (wake_display runs close_cards), so the card's cover is dropped with it. A media tile over the whole page stays under the alert: alert_image_due() holds its cover while the alert's picture is announced, loading or due for a retry, and an alert picture that arrives while a cover is on its way (or while a dropped cover's download is still being closed) waits for it (alert_retry_at, started by camera_tick). Memory was never the limit: the pictures live in PSRAM (cover ~70 KB, alert 172 KB); the rule keeps the main loop, where touch waits, to one download.
• runtime_model.h: Extra carries artist, album, picture mark, duration, position and its moment.
• camera_view.h: open(entity, once), loaded; an empty answer to a one-time feed stops the asking.
• theme.h: theme::of(lv_color_t) (the 24-bit value of a drawn colour, for the cover's corner colour).
• tile_controls.h: feature::MEDIA_TURN_ON.
• App: core.media_extras (x: artist, album, dur, pos, at, pic), COVER_MIN_FIRMWARE = 0.2.64; camera_feed.cover_supported/can_show_cover/cover_request/encode_cover, CameraFeed.cover() (fetched when the picture address changed), Link.cover; server.HomeAssistant.media_picture/media_image, Manager.cover_message, answer_camera serves covers to a Guition on 0.2.64+ for players on its layout.
• Both profiles: firmware 0.2.64. Docs: CHANGELOG, README rows, docs/CAMERA.md "The album cover on the media card".

Checks

• tests/test_media_card.cpp (geometry, progress, clock text, subtitle), tests/test_camera_view.cpp (one-time feed), all 18 C++ suites: pass.
• tests/test_media_card.py (14): extras, firmware wiring, cover encoding (corners, square crop, transparency), fetch-on-change and links, the app's answer through Manager.answer_camera (Guition 0.2.64 gets a link, a stream an empty one, a stranger nothing, older firmware and a CYD nothing). Whole Python suite: 409 + 14, pass.
• Host harness (.esphome/readme-render/media/media_host.py, real ESPHome API, virtual finger, the app's own answer_camera behind /dev/cover): Guition 64/64, CYD 42/42. Covered: the card of a playing player (title, artist · album, elapsed from the reported position and running on, keys enabled, slider at 32 %, bar track and fill), the cover asked for with size and page colour and loaded once over the placeholder, pause → media_play_pause with the keys faded during the wait and back after, next, mute (is_volume_muted: true), the slider drag → volume_set ≈ 0.8, closing drops the cover; a stream (no times, no cover request); a paused muted TV with few features (play key, muted key, "Muted", next and mute faded, previous not, a still bar, its cover); an off player ("Off", no times); dark mode (dark keys, the cover asked again with the dark page colour); a tile over the whole page (track beside the cover, keys, slider, "48 %", times, cover at the tile's size and colour, the bar running, the tile's pause key acting on the study speaker without opening the card, the tile's slider → volume_set ≈ 0.2, a new picture in Home Assistant → new mark → the tile asks again and loads the new cover, holding the tile opens the card which takes the cover at its own size, closing gives it back to the tile); a stream over the page (no times, no cover, the study cover dropped); an idle player ("Not playing"); a wide media tile with a volume control keeps its panel; no errors in the firmware log. The CYD asks for no cover anywhere. Alerts with a camera (Guition): an alert closes the open media card and drops its cover, and its picture loads alone; under a full-page media tile whose cover is not loaded yet, the cover waits until the alert's picture is shown and loads after it; a cover on its way (a link that answers after 1.5 s) finishes first and the alert's picture ("waits for the cover") follows. The firmware log shows the downloads one after the other in all three.
• Renders (render_media.py, both boards, light and dark): card of a playing player, a stream, a paused TV, an off player, tiles over the page (study, radio, idle). Sent to Max for approval.
• ESP32 builds of both Easy Setup profiles: see the sizes below.
• Hardware: Studio 1 (Guition, this network's Home Assistant) — see below.

Sizes

Both Easy Setup profiles compile with ESPHome 2026.6.2, no warnings (see the pitfalls for this Mac's Python).

Build	Flash	RAM
Guition (easy-guition-device)	1,971,975 B, 24.3 % of 8 MB	76,852 B, 23.5 %
CYD (easy-cyd-device)	1,582,183 B, 86.2 % of the 1.835 MB update slot	71,276 B, 21.8 %

Hardware (Studio 1, Guition on the studio's Home Assistant, 2026-09-18 17:20)

• Released as 079ffcf, tag screens-v0.2.77. The add-on on the studio's Home Assistant went 0.2.75 → 0.2.77 from the store; Studio 1 got firmware 0.2.64 over OTA, built from GitHub main (so the published package and its fonts and components resolve; both packages also pass esphome config from an empty folder). It came back on the same address, Home Assistant reports firmware 0.2.64 and the tile settings read Synced.
• Two Sonos tiles were added through the esp_screens_add_tile event: media_player.office_rukbunker as a full-page tile on page 4 and media_player.keuken_bar as a single tile on page 5 (the Sonos group plays in the studio).
• The card of the Keuken Bar tile (opened with preview_runtime_card): the app answered one cover request (the screen asked a second time after 10 s, its normal retry, because the first event arrived while the app reconnected), the real Spotify cover (69 KB BMP) loaded in one download and showed with the title, the artist, the running bar, the keys and the muted volume row.
• Media card open with its cover, then esp_screens_show_alert with camera.amcrest_camera: the card closed, the alert's picture (182 KB) loaded alone and showed 2.2 s after the event; the alert timed out by itself.
• Heap after these tests: 96 KB free, 55 KB largest block, lowest free 91 KB (0.2.63 before the update: 86 / 32 / 61 KB).
• Not tested on hardware: the full-page tile (a page change needs a finger) and the keys and slider on a real player (they play music in the studio): Max checks those himself.

Pitfalls

• render_time on a host build freezes the clock, and the progress bar with it: the harness shifts the demo's report moments to now instead.
• LVGL's LV_LABEL_LONG_DOT writes the dots into the label's text: a probe sees "Miles Davis · Kin...".
• tick() re-enables every object in detail_actions after a wait: a key the player lacks must stay out of it.
• The tile palette pass paints every custom part; a mode that paints its own parts must be skipped there.
• Homebrew's python@3.14.7 on this Mac has a broken pyexpat (it loads macOS's /usr/lib/libexpat.1.dylib, which lacks _XML_SetAllocTrackerActivationThreshold), so platform.mac_ver() returns '' and pip's truststore and uv refuse the interpreter. The pioarduino platform then cannot rebuild ~/.platformio/penv ("Failed to install Python dependencies into penv"). Setting DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/homebrew/opt/expat/lib is not enough, because pioarduino starts uv without it. What works: ESPHome 2026.6.2 in a venv on PlatformIO's own bundled Python 3.11 (~/.platformio/python3), where mac_ver() is fine. Every session must build with that same Python: pioarduino recreates the penv whenever the Python version changes, so a build on another Python breaks the next one elsewhere. brew reinstall python@3.14 (or expat) is the real fix. Never run two ESPHome builds at once.