media screensaver

cool one! Let me look into this when I have time.

Thanks @Heronimonimo! This is better suited to a discussion than an issue, so I moved it here: https://github.com/MaxGramser/homeassistant_espscreen/discussions/106

Please continue the conversation there. I'm closing this issue to keep the tracker for bugs and concrete board requests.

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Good news @Heronimonimo: 0.4.42 (firmware 0.24.0) is out, and media got a big step towards this. It isn't a screensaver yet, but the media card now looks a lot like the example you shared:

• The card sits on a ground in the colours of the cover that plays, with the cover large, the speaker at the top, shuffle, repeat and a bar you drag through the track.
• The library key opens what Home Assistant can browse on the player (playlists, albums, artists), down to a page of covers. A tap plays one.
• Display → Favourite makes a tile that plays one playlist, album or artist on the speaker you choose, with its cover behind it.

_{Rendered from the firmware's own code, with made-up records.}

The cover as a screensaver stays on the list. Let me know what you think of this!

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Great improvements, really nice.

The screensaver addition could nicely build on this.

Already see multiple screensaver options that are worth investigating:

• image slideshow
• large clock
• media player showing cover art and basic controls
• camera feed (for example from you doorbell)

Thanks @Heronimonimo, glad you like it, and thanks for the list! A slideshow, a large clock, the cover with a few controls and a doorbell camera are all good candidates, and they fit together nicely as choices for one idle mode.

I'm open to building this, but it is less simple than showing the album art large. A screen never resizes a picture itself. ESP Screens prepares every picture in the add-on: it crops, rounds and scales a separate version for each size a picture appears at, and sends exactly that to the screen. It also keeps track of what else is on the glass at that moment, because all pictures on a screen share one memory budget worked out from that board's PSRAM. A full-screen cover is a new size on every board, and it has to fit next to the covers, cameras and maps that are already on the page underneath. So a screensaver touches the add-on, the protocol and the firmware of every board, and that takes some careful work. Everything in its own time.

One question where I'd like your view. Many homes have several players: a few Sonos speakers, Music Assistant players, a Spotify Connect device, a TV. Which one should the screensaver follow? A few options I see:

• one player you pick per screen in the editor
• the player in the same area as the screen
• whichever player started playing most recently

And when nothing plays on that player, should it fall back to the clock or a slideshow? How would you want this to work in your home?

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In my case I would like to be able to select a media player per screen that is use for the screensaver.

Fallback when inactive would be nice. That could be to slideshow, clock, camera or it could just fallback to no screensaver when nothing is playing.

@Heronimonimo thanks for the clear answer, that is exactly how it works now. It is in ESP Screen Manager 0.4.48 (firmware 0.29.0), which is out.

Open the screen in ESP Screens, go to Settings, and you'll find a Screensaver card under Brightness:

• Show in standby turns it on. It takes the place of the dimmed tiles when Auto standby kicks in.
• Pick one media player and one camera for this screen.
• Drag Music playing, Camera and Clock into the order you want, and switch off any you never want to see. The screen shows the first one that is available right now.

So with Music, Camera, Clock: while music plays with a cover you see the cover, when it stops you see the camera, and if the camera is away you see a large clock with the date. With everything off or unavailable, standby looks the way it always did.

A few things on how it looks and behaves:

• The cover and the camera fill the whole screen, a little darker so the title or the camera's name stays readable over it. On screens that are much wider or taller than square, like your 10-inch, the cover takes the full height and the rest of the screen is the cover's own colour, with the title next to it.
• Nothing on it can be pressed. A tap just wakes the screen, the same as standby always did.
• It uses your Standby brightness, and your Night brightness at night.
• Screens without memory for pictures (the CYD and a few others) offer the clock only.

The add-on prepares the pictures for each screen's size, so the screen itself does very little work.

A slideshow is not in this first version, but I'm keeping it in mind. Let me know how it looks on your 10-inch!

Got a screen running? Tell others which board you have and what works on the Tessera website. It helps everyone pick a screen that works.

Like my work? Consider buying me a coffee, much appreciated!

Just updated to the new version including the screensaver. Looks very good!

Would it be possible to add media and volume controls to the media screensaver?

When I have time again I can look into it