BarPilot 1.26

One fix, worth its own release: on-call detection on macOS works again.

The 1.25 rewrite misread how macOS reports microphone use. The system logs an attribution line only when the set of apps using the mic changes, not continuously, so long Zoom and Teams calls were cleared minutes in, or never detected at all. The proven event-driven behaviour is restored: detect on the start event, hold through quiet, clear on the end event.

If you use the on-call hook on a Mac, download the new barpilot-usage-helper.py (helper v29) and restart it. Windows detection and everything else is unchanged from 1.25.

BarPilot 1.25

Everything since 1.18, tested against a real bar over USB, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Highlights

• Sounds (new section): a soundboard for the bar's speaker - built-in sounds plus your own recordings and audio files, converted to the bar's .snd format in the browser.
• Messages: custom message and ticker merged into one card - send a single line or rotate the whole list, with inline stamps, animated stamps, per-line colours and crypto prices.
• Prepare the bar: sends every sound, all 1,469 animation frames, every stamp and icon, and your settings to the bar's own storage. Playback becomes a single small command, rotation skips are free, and the playing animation survives reloads.
• Your settings live on the bar and follow it to any machine and any copy of BarPilot.
• Bluetooth control (experimental, work in progress): drive the bar over BLE through the local helper - no Web Bluetooth needed. Known buggy; the app says so on the panel. USB and Wi-Fi remain the reliable paths.
• On-call detection rebuilt for Windows: two independent detectors (registry usage records in both hives plus live audio capture sessions), a "what does Windows see?" debug view, a call timer that matches the real call length, and live banner re-labelling.
• Calendar correctness: deleted occurrences stay deleted, moved occurrences show only at their new time, duplicates are folded.
• Troubleshooter fix buttons re-check themselves and the helper row shows the webhook/microphone chain.
• Helper v28: serves the app at 127.0.0.1:8765/app, syncs settings across origins and to the bar, proxies calendars, runs the webhook and both call detectors, installs its own optional add-ons, hardened against field-reported crashes.

Download barpilot.html (and barpilot-usage-helper.py for calendars, on-call detection, Claude plan usage and Bluetooth).

BarPilot v1.18

Status presets are now yours. Every preset has its own text, icon, colour, flash-display and blink-LED switches, duration, and an optional icon drawn on the bar — all editable in place under ⚙ customise. Add your own, remove the ones you never use, reset to defaults. Text is centred on the bar. New defaults: 🟢 AVAILABLE, 👋 COME IN (with a waving hand on the bar) and 🎧 ON A CALL.

Five more retro games — Tetris, Breakout, Space Invaders, Frogger and Simon, all written for the 72×16 layout with the score drawn on the bar. Seven games total.

231 stamps in 10 packs (up from 159): new emoticon, gesture/symbol and work/status packs, available in Pixel Art, the ticker and the preset icon picker.

Troubleshooter — a new section that runs eight ordered checks (address, reachability, API access, power, firmware, display control, Wi-Fi, local helper) and tells you what to do next in plain language, with buttons that do it where possible.

Light and dark themes, plus colour-blind palettes (deuteran/protan and tritan) so status colours stop depending on red-versus-green. Every status keeps its text label, so colour is never the only signal.

BarMetal features are visible on stock firmware, greyed out with a note explaining what the firmware adds and how to install it — rather than silently hidden.

Two fixes worth calling out: night mode no longer sets the panel brightness to zero (a stored zero survives reboots and hides the device's own menus, which makes a bar look bricked — display-off now always draws black, which ends when night mode ends), and a false "update available" prompt is gone.

Download barpilot.html below and double-click it — no install needed.

BarPilot v1.17

BarPilot now knows which firmware your bar is running.

BarMetal support. If your bar runs BarMetal — the community firmware that fixes the Wi-Fi wedge — BarPilot detects it automatically (harmless probe, no reboot) and unlocks what it adds: reboot controls including just the Wi-Fi radio, which clears a stuck radio in seconds while animations, meetings and the ticker keep running; a Restart Wi-Fi radio button right in the Wi-Fi and Smart Home sections; and real hardware dimming in night mode, where brightness 0 truly switches the panel off instead of BarPilot painting black pixels. On stock firmware everything behaves exactly as before, with the warning banners now pointing at the fix.

Firmware bundle preflight. Pick a file in Manual firmware upload and BarPilot inspects it in your browser before sending anything — it unpacks the bundle manifest and checks the hardware target, the security flags (a secure device rejects bundles that don't declare them) and whether the package would replace vendor-signed radio firmware. Incompatible bundles are refused, with the reason spelled out, before a single byte is uploaded.

New status presets: 🟢 AVAILABLE and 👋 COME IN, both with a green LED.

Download barpilot.html below and double-click it — no install needed.

BarPilot v1.16

On-call detection grew up: on macOS the helper now reads the system's live sensor attributions — the bar goes BUSY when ANY app uses your mic or camera (Teams, Zoom, 8x8, Meet, FaceTime…) and releases when the call ends. Windows support via the OS mic/camera-in-use flags is implemented and awaiting field testing. On-call behavior is fully configurable: banner text, display flash, LED blink.

BarPilot also now checks GitHub daily for new releases — a green ⬆ chip appears in the top bar, and one click updates in place (Chrome/Edge) or downloads the new file. Settings carry over automatically.

Download barpilot.html (and the helper) below — no install needed.

BarPilot v1.15

The local helper is now easy to find (⬇ helper buttons in the Claude, Calendar, and On-call cards) and published as a reviewable file — barpilot-usage-helper.py is attached below and lives in the repo, byte-identical to what the page generates. Calendar feeds gained an ✎ edit button.

Download barpilot.html (and optionally the helper) below — no install needed.

BarPilot v1.14

Your calendar now drives the bar: add secret ICS addresses (Google, Outlook/Microsoft 365 — including Teams meetings — iCloud, Fastmail, Calendly, 8x8/Zoom-synced events) and meeting mode starts automatically when events begin, with the event title on the banner. On-call hooks make the bar go BUSY while you're actually in a call: Windows watches the OS mic/camera-in-use flags (any call app), macOS detects Zoom, and a local webhook covers everything else. The single Python helper (Windows + macOS, stdlib only) now serves Claude usage, calendar feeds, the webhook, and call detection — re-download it from the Claude section.

Honest labels: Wi-Fi and Smart Home sections carry broken-on-firmware banners while the fw 1.1.1 Wi-Fi co-processor wedge is unfixed (see README Known issues + the unbricking cheatsheet).

Download barpilot.html below and double-click it — no install needed.

BarPilot v1.13

The bar's physical mode switch now controls the page: flip it off OFF and BarPilot yields the screen so the bar's own cards and menus are visible; flip back and everything resumes. Plus: manual 🖐 hold (all tabs at once), an auto-yield watchdog for menus/sessions, exact meeting countdowns (clock-skew compensation + auto clock sync), Matter pairing that retries the 503 warm-up with live status, Wi-Fi scan guidance, automatic official Claude plan percentages, and a phone-friendly mini remote generator.

Download barpilot.html below and double-click it — no install needed. See the README for known device issues.

BarPilot v1.12

Night mode that actually dims (the firmware brightness API is visibly inert — BarPilot owns the pixels instead: display off = black screens, dim = faint clock with glow control). Ticker icons now render inline where you type them, up to 3 per message with multiple animated at once, plus a visual picker. Snake and Pong show their scores on the bar. Rotation playlists can be skipped with buttons, the mouse wheel on the now-playing chip, or arrow keys. 92 built-in animations (new cats/dogs/lizards/memes pack). Optional Claude plan-usage monitoring via a tiny local helper. Pinned busylib / @busy-app/busy-lib documentation and a one-click busylib .py exporter.

Download barpilot.html below and double-click it — no install needed.

BarPilot v1.11

Unofficial single-file web controller for the BUSY Bar — download barpilot.html and double-click it (Windows & macOS). Covers the full local HTTP API plus meeting mode, pixel art (159 stamps), 73 animations with seamless rotation playlists, scenes, desktop shortcuts, Matter QR pairing, and a raw API console. MIT, use with attribution. Not affiliated with Flipper Devices.