FiestaPanel

FiestaPanel turns any screen with a web browser — most usefully a TV on a wall — into a realistic split-flap display that fills the screen. No Vestaboard hardware required.

A panel is a virtual board: FiestaBoard drives it exactly like a physical board (pages, schedules, plugins, transitions), and a full-screen web page renders whatever was last sent to it, optionally flipping its tiles with the same mechanical animation as the real thing.

Overview

• Auto-fit, true to life. Tell FiestaBoard your screen's diagonal size and it builds the largest board that fits: every flap renders at a true-to-life split-flap size, and the grid grows with the screen one character at a time — a 55″ TV gets a 29×12 board (29 columns, 12 rows), a 65″ TV gets 34×14, an 85″ TV gets 45×18. The board is borderless and frameless, filling the screen edge to edge (with up to a 10% gentle stretch to close any remaining gap).
• Live. The panel polls for new frames every 2 seconds, so anything that drives the board — a schedule flipping pages, a plugin update, the page editor's Live Output — appears on the TV within moments (with a full mechanical flip animation when you turn it on).
• No login on the TV. The panel URL works in any browser with no account or session. You configure everything in the FiestaBoard app; the TV just displays.

Quick Setup

1. Open Settings → Hardware → FiestaPanel and click Create panel.
2. Give it a name and choose your TV's diagonal size (presets from 32″ to 85″, or a custom value). The board's grid is computed automatically.
3. Open the panel URL in the TV's web browser. Every panel gets a short URL that's easy to type on a TV — the first panel is /p/1 (for example http://192.168.1.50:4420/p/1) — plus a QR code and a copy button in Settings.
4. Give the panel content the same way you would any board: it appears in the board selector, so set its active page, add it to schedules, or point plugins at it. A panel's grid is any number of columns and rows — it is not built from 15×3 Note blocks — and the page editor sizes pages to it for you (see below).

That's it. The TV shows a blank board until the first frame arrives.

Making Pages for a Panel

A panel's grid is auto-fit from your TV size, so it is almost never one of the stock board shapes — which means a page has to be authored for that panel, not for a stock Flagship, Note or Note Array.

You never have to work that out yourself:

• In the page editor, the board-size picker beside the preview lists your panels by name at the top — "Kitchen TV · 29×12" (columns × rows). Pick one and the page is sized to that panel in one step. The generic Flagship / Note / Note Array choices stay below for real hardware.
• Everywhere pages are listed, a page whose grid matches a panel shows a quiet "Fits Kitchen TV" line, so you can tell at a glance which page belongs on which screen. Two panels the same size both fit the same page, and the label says so.
• Ask FiestaBot. "Make a page for my Kitchen TV panel" reads the panel's real grid before it builds anything.

A page is matched to a panel purely by its shape — nothing is stored to tie the two together. So a page fits every panel of that size, and re-fitting a panel (by changing its TV size) leaves pages authored for the old grid behind: the app warns you which ones when it happens.

Panels created on older versions were fit in whole 15×3 Note blocks, which often left part of the screen dark. After upgrading, FiestaBoard re-fits them per character on startup and moves the pages made for each panel's old grid to its new, larger one, so they keep showing — now across the whole screen. A page is left where it is if a real Note Array still uses that size, or if two panels that used to share it now fit differently.

Display Options

Edit a panel any time — changes reach the TV within about 10 seconds, no reload needed:

Setting	What it does
TV size	Drives everything: the flap scale (pixels-per-inch from your diagonal) and the auto-fit grid (as many real-size flaps — columns and rows — as fit a screen of that size and aspect ratio). Changing it re-fits the board's dimensions.
Flip animation	Off by default — characters update in place instantly. Turn it on for the full mechanical spin on every change.
Auto-dim	Fades the panel down during a nightly window (e.g. 22:00–07:00), using the TV's own clock.
Size calibration	±15% fine-tune for TVs whose browsers misreport their resolution or overscan the picture.

FiestaPi HDMI Output

Running FiestaBoard on a FiestaPi? The Pi can drive a TV or monitor directly over HDMI — no browser setup on the TV at all:

1. Connect a screen to the Pi's HDMI port.
2. In Settings → Hardware → FiestaPanel, turn on HDMI output on this FiestaPi. The Pi installs a minimal kiosk browser (a few minutes, one time) and boots it onto the screen, pointed at the reserved /p/display URL.
3. Turn on Display output for the panel you want on that screen. Only one panel holds the role at a time — switching it re-points the screen from the app, no touching the Pi.

Until a panel is designated, the screen shows a short instruction card. Turn the HDMI switch off to stop the kiosk and reclaim its memory.

Notes:

• The switch appears only on FiestaPi installs with the updater sidecar running (it performs the install). If it reports the sidecar is too old, reboot the Pi once — it refreshes the sidecar on every boot — and try again.
• Fresh FiestaPi images also support a flash-time opt-in: drop an empty fiestapi-hdmi.txt on the SD card's boot partition and the kiosk is active from first boot.
• Prefer the command line? The same setup is one SSH command — see the Raspberry Pi guide.

TV Tips

• Fullscreen: click or tap anywhere on the panel to toggle browser fullscreen. Many TV browsers are effectively fullscreen already.
• Keep the screen awake: the panel asks the browser for a screen wake lock where supported, but TV sleep timers usually win — disable the TV's screensaver/auto-off for the best result.
• Mind burn-in on OLED: a static message is a static image. The panel's background is pure black to minimize lit pixels, and auto-dim helps overnight.
• The cursor hides itself after a few seconds.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Meaning
Blank board	Nothing has been sent to the panel's virtual board yet — set an active page or wait for its schedule. A restart of FiestaBoard also blanks panels until the next send.
Small amber dot in the corner	The TV lost its connection to FiestaBoard; the last frame stays up and the panel keeps retrying.
"This panel no longer exists"	The panel was deleted in the app. Create a new one and open its new URL.
Board looks the wrong physical size	Double-check the TV size setting, then use Size calibration to nudge it true.
Grid seems smaller than expected	Auto-fit adds a column or row only when a whole real-size flap fits, so there can be a sliver of margin the ≤10% stretch can't close. Screens smaller than about 28″ (16:9) get a 15-column grid (the width of a Note) that is shrunk slightly to fit.
Board drawn too small, or only part of it, after an upgrade	The TV is still running the previous version of the panel page. Reload it once (or power-cycle a kiosk) to pick up the per-character grid.
Content looks clipped or misplaced	The panel has its own grid (e.g. 29×12). Pick the panel in the page editor's size picker — pages made for a 22×6 Flagship don't stretch to fill it.