[tickarr]: bump to v0.3.01 — on-demand overlays, EAS weather alerts, sports on-demand

[jstevenscl]

What's New in v0.3.00

This is a major feature release covering two large areas: EAS/JAS Weather Alerts (new feature) and on-demand mode for every overlay type.

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Why On-Demand Mode

Previously, enabling Now Playing on a large satellite radio lineup cloned a stream profile for every channel and ran FFmpeg re-encoding 24/7 — whether or not anyone was watching. On an install with 200+ satellite radio channels, that meant hundreds of constantly active FFmpeg processes burning CPU and memory at all times.

On-demand mode means Tickarr does nothing to a channel until a viewer actually tunes in. The moment someone connects, the overlay activates. When no one has been watching for ~30 seconds, the channel silently returns to passthrough. This takes most installs from hundreds of always-on re-encodes down to just the handful of channels people are actively watching right now.

The same pattern applies to Custom Text and Sports Ticker trigger modes — no encoding happens until the trigger condition is actually met.

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Why the Transcode Quality Setting

The Sports Ticker fires across every enabled channel simultaneously when a trigger condition is met (e.g. a live game starts). On a server with limited headroom, having 20 channels all spin up a 1080p30 FFmpeg process at the same moment can spike CPU significantly. The transcode quality setting lets the user dial this down to 720p30 or 720p for their hardware, and the default (1080p30) gives headroom for servers that can handle it.

This was discovered during live testing with MLB and FIFA games where multiple channels all triggered at once.

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New Features

EAS/JAS Weather Alerts

• Monitors NOAA/NWS API for active weather alerts in configured zone codes
• Automatically activates a broadcast-style scrolling alert bar when an alert fires for the configured zones
• Colored severity label — when multiple alert types are active simultaneously, shows the worst (e.g. Tornado Warning over Severe Thunderstorm Watch) and crawl lists all active events
• Optional dual-tone attention tone (853+960 Hz, the EAS standard) repeating at a configurable interval
• Co-arms with Now Playing, Custom Text, and Sports Ticker — EAS takes precedence when an alert fires, and the previous ticker resumes automatically the moment the alert clears
• Test EAS Alert action: fires a fake alert for a configurable duration so users can verify their overlay without waiting for a real event
• Migrate EAS action: for users on older always-on EAS profiles, restores channels to passthrough and switches them to dynamic on-demand mode

JAS — jesmannstl Alert System. Dedicated to jesmannstl, a weather fanatic and beloved member of the Dispatcharr community who passed away. Every alert that fires is a reminder of him.

Sports Ticker — On-Demand Trigger Modes

• Active Games Only: ticker fires automatically when a live game is in progress in any selected league, clears when all games end
• Favorite Teams Only: ticker fires only when one of the user's specified teams is currently playing
• Static vs Scrolling style toggle (boolean field — select fields send None in action params, boolean fields send True/False reliably)
• Multi-color mode: team abbreviations, scores, and labels render in distinct colors
• Transcode quality selector: 1080p30 / 720p30 / 720p / Full
• Update Sports Ticker action: change settings on the fly without disable/re-enable
• Test Sports Ticker action: fire a fake ticker to verify font, color, and position without waiting for a live game
• Added: FIFA World Cup, FIFA Women's World Cup, UEFA Europa League

Now Playing — On-Demand Mode (now the default)

• Overlay activates when a viewer tunes in, returns to passthrough when idle for ~30 seconds
• Audio-only channel lavfi canvas upgraded from 854x480@15fps to 1280x720@15fps for sharper font rendering on large screens

Custom Text — On-Demand Mode

• Channel stays on passthrough until text is set via Update Custom Text
• Clear the text and run Update — overlay disappears instantly, no disable/re-enable needed

Under the Hood (carried from v0.1.02)

• Distributed worker locks prevent two Dispatcharr workers from running the same channel's background polling simultaneously
• Per-channel fetch deduplication: only one outbound fetch per channel at any moment, result shared across workers — fixed a 184% CPU spike on multi-worker installs

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Requires Dispatcharr v0.27.1 or later

The Dispatcharr v0.27.1 worker and EPG request changes are the baseline for this release.

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Full changelog and user guide: https://github.com/jstevenscl/tickarr/blob/master/docs/USERGUIDE.md

[jstevenscl]

⚠️ Action required before merging: please delete the v0.3.00 GitHub release from https://github.com/jstevenscl/tickarr/releases

The v0.3.00 ZIP was missing three required files (channels.json, channel_aliases.json, eas_tone.wav). Anyone who installs v0.3.00 will have non-functional channel matching and a silent EAS tone. v0.3.01 corrects the ZIP — same code, no functional changes from v0.3.00, version bumped only to distinguish from the broken build.

I've already created the v0.3.01 release at https://github.com/jstevenscl/tickarr/releases/tag/v0.3.01 and updated this PR branch to reference v0.3.01. Once v0.3.00 is deleted from releases, this PR is ready to merge.

[dispatcharr-plugins-bot]

Plugin Validation Results

Modified plugins: 1

Plugin: tickarr

Dynamic text overlays for IPTV channels — Satellite Radio Now Playing, Sports Ticker, Custom Text, EAS/JAS Weather Alerts

Source Repository

Check	Status	Details
Required fields	✅	All required fields present
Release artifact	✅	Artifact reachable at resolved URL
Maintainers	✅	jstevenscl
License	✅	MIT - MIT License
Permission	✅	You have permission to modify this plugin
Version	✅	0.3.00
Version bump	❌	No changes detected - nothing to publish

View release v0.3.00 on GitHub · Compare v0.3.00...v0.3.00

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EPGeditARR	epgeditarr	0.2.07