led-ticker-flair

Homage sprite-trail transitions and text animations for led-ticker — four sprite families plus the propeller animation, all in one wheel.

Sprite-trail transitions

Unofficial fan homage. These sprites are the property of their respective rights holders and are not covered by this project's license. Non-commercial homage only; no affiliation or endorsement. See the repo NOTICE.

Propeller animation

flair.propeller spins a message widget's text in-plane on visit entry — a full-rotation ease-out that settles flat — then holds the text readable for the rest of the configured hold time. Transitions wait for the spin to finish before starting.

Requires led-ticker-core >= 4.3; with core >= 4.5 the spin runs at physical resolution on scaled displays (bigsign) — hi-res fonts and emoji spin too.

Config

Shorthand (all defaults):

[[playlist.section.widget]]
type = "message"
text = "Hello!"
animation = "flair.propeller"

Inline table with overrides:

[[playlist.section.widget]]
type = "message"
text = "Hello!"
animation = {style = "flair.propeller", revolutions = 3, spin_seconds = 1.5, direction = "ccw"}

Knobs

Caveats

• Message widgets only. flair.propeller works on message widgets (core rejects animation on other widget types at config load). GIF / image text-overlay widgets accept animation but ignore the rotation.
• Hi-res fonts spin on scaled displays (core >= 4.5). Mid-spin renders at half detail and sharpens at settle; animated font_color providers (rainbow, color_cycle, shimmer) freeze during the spin and resume at settle. On scale-1 displays hi-res fonts still display unrotated — led-ticker validate warns (rule 63) for that case only.
• Short-hold warning. If spin_seconds outlasts hold_time the spin is truncated and the text appears only briefly. led-ticker validate warns (rule 62). Either raise hold_time or lower spin_seconds / revolutions.
• Phase resets each visit. The spin restarts from the beginning every time the widget enters the rotation — it does not continue mid-spin across section cycles.

Spinout transition

flair.spinout spins the outgoing widget's on-screen content like a propeller — starting at rest and accelerating — then cuts to the incoming widget. The outgoing section's background color holds through the entire spin.

Requires led-ticker-core >= 4.6.

Config

[[playlist.section]]
transition = "flair.spinout"

With knobs:

[[playlist.section]]
transition = {type = "flair.spinout", revolutions = 3, direction = "ccw"}

Knobs

Notes

• Spin duration comes from the standard [transitions] duration — no separate timing knob.
• Pairs with the propeller animation for a full cycle: animation = "flair.propeller" spins the text in, it rests, then transition = "flair.spinout" spins it out.
• The outgoing content is snapshotted at its final position (scrolled text spins from where it stopped); colors freeze during the spin, same as the propeller animation.
• A propeller-animated widget cut off mid-spin (hold shorter than its spin — led-ticker validate rule 62 warns) enters the spinout with a residual angle and briefly compounds rotations; cosmetic and sub-second.

Fisheye animation

flair.fisheye sends a scrolling message through a stationary "fisheye lens" centered on the panel: letters enter compressed at the edges, swell as they cross the middle, and compress again on the way out — the marquee bulges through a fixed lens while the text moves through it.

Requires led-ticker-core >= 4.7. Message widgets only (v0.4.0). On scaled displays (bigsign) the whole scroll renders at half detail; the lens distortion masks it.

Config

[[playlist.section.widget]]
type = "message"
text = "FISH EYE MARQUEE"
animation = "flair.fisheye"

With knobs (a stronger lens):

[[playlist.section.widget]]
type = "message"
text = "FISH EYE MARQUEE"
animation = {style = "flair.fisheye", magnify = 1.33, edge_squeeze = 0.45}

Knobs

Notes

• The lens is stationary; the scroll provides all the motion — so the effect is continuous with no phase, and a section can cut away at any instant.
• Edges show more text by design. The lens is width-preserving (total scroll traversal matches an unwarped scroll), but the compressed edges reveal ~8–9 extra characters per side — the squeeze fits more in.
• Colors stay live through the lens: a rainbow / color_cycle font_color keeps sweeping as the text scrolls (no freeze).
• Held (non-overflowing) text shows a static center bulge — a legitimate emphasis look.

Lottery widget

flair.lottery rolls N labeled balls in from off-canvas left, one at a time, in a staggered relay — each ball tumbles as it rolls (the word visibly spins with the face) and settles flat, upright, into an evenly spaced slot across the panel. A physical lottery-ball draw, rendered as a held widget.

Requires led-ticker-core >= 4.10 (the rotation-translation seam the roll-in uses) and a scaled display (bigsign only) — the balls paint at physical resolution via the same hi-res machinery as inline emoji and hi-res fonts. On an unscaled display (smallsign, default_scale = 1) the widget logs a warning once and paints nothing; led-ticker validate also warns at config-load time so this shows up before deploy, not after.

Config

[[playlist.section.widget]]
type = "flair.lottery"
words = ["fresh", "hot", "kebab"]
ball_style = "classic"
border = "rainbow"

Both styles

• ball_style = "classic" (default) — a white face with a colored rim ring and dark text, like a real lottery ball.
• ball_style = "solid" — a solid color-filled face with white text.

[[playlist.section.widget]]
type = "flair.lottery"
words = ["fresh", "hot", "kebab"]
ball_style = "solid"
colors = [[255, 60, 60], [60, 220, 60], [255, 180, 0]]

Knobs

Auto-palette when colors is omitted

Omitting colors cycles the balls through an 8-color built-in palette in order (red, green, amber, blue, magenta, cyan, orange, violet), repeating if there are more than 8 words. Set colors explicitly to override any or all of them — the list must be the same length as words.

Derived sizing — no size knobs

There is no ball_size / diameter field: ball diameter, slot spacing, and font size are all derived from the panel geometry and word count (layout() fits n evenly-spaced slots across the panel width, capped by the content-band height; auto_font_size() picks the largest label size that fits the ball's circular face). Fewer/shorter words get bigger balls; more/longer words get smaller ones. If a word genuinely can't fit any legible label size, led-ticker validate warns at config-load and the ball still renders (unlabeled) at render time — check the warning rather than trying to tune around it with a size knob that doesn't exist.

Bigsign-only, and border support

Same physical-resolution requirement as inline hi-res emoji — see the requirement note above. border composes normally: it paints the panel perimeter before the balls (same order as every other bordered widget), and the smoke config in examples/config.lottery-smoke.bigsign.toml demonstrates a rainbow border alongside classic-style balls.

Install

Part of the led-ticker-plugins monorepo. Install:

pip install "git+https://github.com/JamesAwesome/led-ticker-plugins.git@flair-v0.1.0#subdirectory=plugins/flair"