edwardtfn/NSPanel-Easy v2026.11.9

v2026.11.9 - fix: Lighter panel automations, °F climate step and overlapping binding updates

on GitHub

Each panel's automation is now much smaller. The Blueprint carried every Material Design icon as a dictionary with more than 7,000 entries, copied into every panel's automation, and tools that go through all automations, such as Spook, could keep Home Assistant busy for a long time on systems with several panels. Icons work as before.

On panels built with temp_units: °F, the climate page now moves the target temperature in steps of 1 °F, as Home Assistant does, instead of 1.8 °F.

When a panel's automation ran again while it was still sending the panel's bindings (e.g. after changing its settings), the panel could save a mix of both runs. It now keeps only the newest one.

Panels no longer boot at full brightness, e.g. after a power outage at night: while booting, the display uses "Display Brightness Dimdown", and the regular brightness returns when the panel shows the wake-up page. With the new TFT, the boot screen also starts dimmed from the first moment. Updating the TFT is optional: without it, the boot screen is only bright for a moment before the firmware dims it.

Details:

• Icons: all_icons is replaced by all_icon_names, a single string with every icon name in codepoint order, plus special_icons. Strings per panel automation went from 33,753 to 18,862. Fixed icons in the Blueprint are written as glyphs with the icon name in a comment. hmi/dev/fonts/build_mdi_fonts.py generates the lines.
• Climate step: the thermostat's temperature_step is written without a unit, so it stays in the unit of temp_units on every ESPHome version, and the climate page uses it as is. With the unit, ESPHome 2026.11+ converts a °F step to °C, which Home Assistant would show as steps of 0.6 °F. Home Assistant doesn't convert the step when its unit differs from the panel's (reported in home-assistant/core#190241), which is now documented. A custom step must be written in the unit of temp_units, without a unit.
• Bindings: api_subscribe and api_subscribe_end have a new required push_id parameter, the push's start time. Calls from an older push are ignored, a newer push replaces the one being staged, and an ignored end marker no longer stops the watchdog of the push being staged. Identifiers longer than 23 characters are ignored. The API version is now 2.0. Scripts that call these actions directly must send push_id, see docs/api_subscribe.md.
• Climate backup mode: the documentation now explains that, while Home Assistant is connected, Home Assistant switches the backup relays itself, and how to let the panel's thermostat switch the relay all the time instead.
• Icons: an icon input that is empty or written without the mdi: prefix no longer logs a template warning (list object has no element 1). An empty one falls back to the default icon, as before, and a name without the prefix (e.g. lightbulb) is now shown as that icon instead of the default one.
• Boot brightness: the dimmed brightness is applied when the display finishes its setup during the boot, kept when timers restart, any page loads or a page applies its own brightness (e.g. on a swipe) before the boot completes, and changes of "Display Brightness Dimdown" during the boot apply straight away. After a display-only restart, the firmware now sends the configured brightness values to the display again, so pages no longer load at 100%. TFT 22.4 starts the boot page with dim=brightness_dim instead of dim=100. The minimum TFT version stays 22.3.
• Issues marked as stale now close after 7 days instead of 14.

Closes #630, #646
Related to #485, #636, #644, #652

What's Changed

Other Changes

• ci: Close stale issues after 7 days by @panel-easy-assistant[bot] in #648
• fix: Climate add-on target temperature step on °F builds by @panel-easy-assistant[bot] in #649
• improve: Replace the Blueprint icon dictionary with a single name string by @panel-easy-assistant[bot] in #653
• docs: Clarify who drives the backup relay while Home Assistant is connected by @panel-easy-assistant[bot] in #654
• fix: Keep overlapping binding pushes from being saved mixed by @panel-easy-assistant[bot] in #650
• feat: Keep the display dimmed while the panel boots by @panel-easy-assistant[bot] in #651
• ci: Report Blueprint metrics on pull requests by @panel-easy-assistant[bot] in #658
• fix: Lighter panel automations, °F climate step and overlapping binding updates by @edwardtfn in #655

Full Changelog: v2026.11.8...v2026.11.9