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 real Vestaboard size, and the grid grows with the screen — a 65″ TV gets a 30×12 board, 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. Panels use note-array layouts (blocks of 15×3), which the page editor supports natively.

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

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 as fit a 16:9 screen of that size). 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 grows in blocks of 15 columns × 3 rows, so some screens have leftover margin the ≤10% stretch can't close — the next block simply didn't fit at real flap size.
Content looks clipped or misplaced	The panel is a note-array board (e.g. 30×12). Author pages for that layout in the page editor — pages made for a 22×6 Flagship don't stretch to fill it.