v4.0 — Profiles, Scheduling & 3D Fonts

v4.0 — Profiles, Scheduling & 3D Fonts

Stable release for ESP8266 and ESP32. v4.0 brings display profiles,
scheduling, animated progress bars, display rotation and PixelFonts 3D to
wledPixel. It includes the ESP8266 weather and web/MQTT stability fixes from
the v4.0 beta releases.

New PixelFonts 3D font

Give your messages and clock an outlined, shadowed pixel style with
PixelFonts 3D (Latin), based on pixelfont_3d_5x5_thin from
mcer12/PixelFonts.

• Fits the full 8-pixel display height, including the outline and shadow.
• Supports ASCII letters, digits, punctuation and the euro sign. Cyrillic and
  accented letters are not included; unsupported characters display ?.
• Keeps the existing degree sign for temperatures and arrows for stock prices.
  Blinking clock separators keep the same width.
• Select Profiles → zone → Font → PixelFonts 3D (Latin), then Apply Now.
  On a 32-column zone, set Character spacing = 0 to fit a 24-hour HH:MM clock.
• The font uses about 1.8 KB of flash and is distributed under the MIT license
  with attribution. The README includes a pixel preview and a real-device photo.

Display profiles and scheduling

• Store 4 profiles on ESP8266 or 8 on ESP32, including the default profile.
• Override selected settings per profile: power, brightness, zone layout, modes,
  fonts, scrolling, clocks, weather, MQTT/HA sources, countdowns, stock tickers
  and progress bars. No change preserves the active value.
• Schedule profiles by hour, minute, days of the week and days of the month,
  using synchronized NTP time and the configured time-zone offset.
• Apply Now saves and activates a profile. Saving alone stores it. Apply or
  schedule the default profile explicitly to return to the baseline.
• Profile edits use isolated drafts. A profile and its progress bars commit
  together, and the UI reports storage errors before confirming the save.

Progress bars, rotation and clocks

• Regular progress bars show HA/MQTT values or time-based progress.
• Dynamic progress bars provide 16 animations and two configurable
  HA/MQTT value rules, with separate animation speeds and per-profile settings.
• Service Settings → System settings → Rotate display 180° rotates the
  entire display, including zones, text, animations and progress bars. This
  global setting is saved across reboots and shared by all profiles.
• Choose 12-hour clocks with or without am/pm, alongside the 24-hour formats.

Reliability improvements

• ESP8266 weather polling uses a secondary IRAM heap for TLS contexts and record
  buffers, with DRAM/IRAM checks before requests. Compact TLS records are used
  only when the server confirms support. Invalid or incomplete weather responses
  preserve the previous reading.
• MQTT disconnects, buffer resizing and subscription changes run from the
  foreground loop on ESP8266, avoiding reentrant socket operations.
• API responses capture changing runtime values before streaming. Complete
  backups load each profile and progress-bar record once while streaming.
• ESP32 profile/bar records use compact LittleFS storage; redundant settings no
  longer consume NVS entries. Existing partition layouts are preserved.
• Settings restore retains missing, empty and No change values correctly.
  DS18B20 conversion is non-blocking; countdown input, UTF-8 encoding and stock
  ticker allocation handling are also hardened.

Updating and compatibility

1. Download a settings backup before updating and keep it private: it contains
   credentials. Retain your previous firmware separately for rollback.
2. Install wledPixel-v4.0_ESP8266.bin or wledPixel-v4.0_ESP32.bin for
   your board through the existing firmware-update workflow. These are
   application images, not merged ESP32 factory images. Verify downloads using
   SHA256SUMS.
3. After reboot, confirm v4.0, check your profiles and integrations, then
   select the new font where wanted. Save a fresh settings backup afterward.

v4.0 beta backups remain supported, and their font IDs are unchanged. v3.6
backups restore settings present in those files; they cannot supply newer
profile settings. A settings backup contains no firmware. To downgrade, install
the target firmware and restore a backup made with that version.

Validation and operational limits

• Native tests run with AddressSanitizer and UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer,
  including real MD_MAX72XX font decoding, glyph orientation, punctuation
  alignment, fixed-width clock blinking, UTF-8 conversion and profile restore.
• Python checks cover web assets, JavaScript syntax, OTA guards and backup
  comparisons. Normal and HIL firmware builds are checked for both platforms;
  only normal firmware images are distributed.
• The ESP8266 release image is checked through OTA, reboot and comparison with
  the saved complete settings backup. The new 3D font has also been photographed
  on a physical display, as shown above. ESP32 validation for this release is
  through builds and native tests.
• ESP8266 has limited heap: browser activity can temporarily disconnect MQTT
  and postpone background polling. Incoming MQTT payloads are limited to
  512 bytes; work-mode and scroll-effect command topics remain available,
  but new HA discovery entries for those controls are omitted on ESP8266.
• The ESP32 image uses about 97% of the default application partition.
• Full-settings restore is not one transaction. Atomic storage covers a
  profile and its progress bars; an interrupted full restore may be partial.