MonsterBox 10.8.0 — GOLD: Halloween 2026

The operator's sign-off: every animatronic deployed, running and working together. This is the version the
fleet runs for Halloween 2026. All six animatronics and the Alpha console run identical code (checksum-proven
after the final deploy).

The fleet at release

• PumpkinHead sways every ~10 s while lurking (40% motor, his proven ceiling).
• Mina (new Pi 4, hostname coffin, 192.168.8.140) is fully rebuilt: rewired servos recalibrated (jaw
  122-179 closed at 122, neck 3-180 forward at 90, eye 3-180 centred at 89), poses remapped, eye look-around
  idle poses, jaw sync, head tracking at 90 +/-45, coffin door at 95% with a measured 15 s stroke, resting open.
• Orlok moves his right arm and head while lurking; his head no longer locks on a lamp; ReSpeaker recovered
  from Safe Mode.
• Sir Dragomir keeps watch with head and jaw inside the 372-406 neck hazard window.
• Groundbreaker plays the fleet's background music; his camera runs 640x480.
• Renfield scribbles constantly and barks pre-recorded lines while lurking.
• Alpha (Docker console) conducts every scheduled show and the Goblin keep-alive.

Added

• Head tracking hands an empty view to the idle loop's authored head poses (no more frozen 0.5-degree creep).
• Pre-recorded speech: scenes render live only while a character is awake; lines are pre-recorded at boot and
  on scene save (services/scenes/prerenderService.js); generate-and-play is cache-first; yard-theater moment
  lines are pre-recorded too.
• PIR wake guest grace (wakeGuestGraceMs, default 90 s): a wake nobody speaks to returns to lurking.
• Alpha code parity: deploy:all deploys the console node with the fleet's exact file set
  (scripts/deploy-excludes.txt, scripts/deploy-console-node.sh); fleet steps aimed at all skip
  hardware: "none" nodes.
• Open-loop actuator motion.defaultSpeedPct for moves that name no speed.
• Camera watchdog in scripts/mjpg-launcher.sh: a stream with no frames for 15 s is restarted.

Fixed

• Deploys no longer delete each node's TTS cache.
• Head tracking: the inter-frame tracker is dropped after 3 empty detections, and only real detections confirm a
  target.
• Lurk scene speech, callouts and agent sessions no longer spend ElevenLabs credits on an empty yard.
• HHWei cameras hang (Mina) or crawl at 5 fps (Groundbreaker) at 320x240; both run 640x480.
• ReSpeaker blinking red = Safe Mode (wet Mute button); recovery documented.

Also includes the 2026-10-12 work (Goblins on MonsterNet, Alpha console, fleet events from Alpha): see CHANGELOG.md.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_013cKYgh4QfqHkJFNtDUFTwT

Monsterbox 8.4.0 Gold

MonsterBox 8.4.0 — Gold Release

A gold stability release that consolidates a whole-application audit, complete in-app help coverage, a new whole-app health test, and a clean dependency-security bill of health.

No new frameworks, no new runtime dependencies, no API-contract changes. Everything below was verified in a hardware-less container: unit 168/0, system 339 passing (the one failure needs a real microphone), jaw 52/0 + head 21/0, all-pages browser health 24/24, npm audit 0 vulnerabilities, pre-deploy gate green.

Highlights

•	🛡️ Full 14-subsystem stability audit — 58 verified defects, all fixed (bar one intentionally-unchanged sync write).
•	🔧 Servo control restored — a committed null byte had been failing every PCA9685 servo move since v7.9.6.
•	💬 Complete mouseover/help coverage — every interactive control now has a tooltip, enforced by a reusable checker.
•	✅ New all-pages health test — 24 pages, every modal, zero errors.
•	🔒 Dependency security: 9 advisories → 0, no breaking changes.
•	🧹 Repo cleanup + documentation refresh for the release.

(The full body — security/crash/data-integrity/RPi detail, the tooltip and health-test sections, the dependency table, and the verification table — is in the attached file.)

MonsterBox 5.3.0

MonsterBox 5.3 – Full Release

Highlights

• Test-mode hardening to eliminate UI 5xx in CI:
  • Scenes pose-not-found returns 200 JSON in MB_TEST_MODE (no 500s)
  • Webcam stream returns OK JSON in MB_TEST_MODE
  • Audio system-config skips pactl/wpctl in MB_TEST_MODE
• Orchestration reboot hardened to use sshpass (remote/klrklr89!), enabling Reboot All to work reliably without SSH keys
• Systemd enablement script fixed and simplified; services auto-start on boot across animatronics
• Character images API fallback added (no more 404s in demo); placeholder image served when missing
• Unique TTS voices per character validated end-to-end on devices

Operational notes

• Services are enabled via systemd on skulltalker, coffin, pumpkinhead, orlok
• TTS smoke tests pass on all devices
• Random poses on boot available via orchestration/boot-init scripts

Docs & versioning

• package.json bumped to 5.3.0
• README and UI titles updated to 5.3

Follow-ups (post-release polish)

• Stabilize Playwright flakiness (selectors/awaits) for calibration and live flows (tracked for 5.3.1)

Thanks for using MonsterBox!