What's new in Kiosk Satellite 2026.8.29
This release closes out the screen-off reliability work: Voice Satellite stays available around the clock, MQTT entities stop flapping on hardware where the radio misbehaves in the dark, and enabling the real screen-off now tells you what you are signing up for.
Fix: Voice Satellite no longer goes unavailable while the screen is off (#186)
- Voice Satellite's availability rides a subscription on the dashboard page's connection to Home Assistant, and it turns out Android's WebView suspends a hidden page's JavaScript timers entirely once the screen powers off, measured as a 50 millisecond timer that simply never fires. With its event loop stopped, the page could not keep that connection alive; Home Assistant marked the satellite unavailable within a couple of minutes, and only wake words kept working because the wake path repairs the connection on its way in.
- The screensaver's rendering pause now follows the panel: it lifts when the screen powers off, which costs nothing since a dark panel draws no frames, and returns the moment the screen lights back up. Verified on an Echo Show 8, the satellite now stays available and listening through dark spells that previously killed it inside three minutes.
Changed: MQTT 5, and the end of availability flapping (#184)
- The MQTT integration now speaks MQTT 5 and uses its will delay: the broker holds the offline verdict for 90 seconds, so a device whose Wi-Fi naps and reconnects with the screen off never shows unavailable in Home Assistant at all, while a device that is genuinely gone is still marked offline honestly once the delay passes. This ends the once-a-minute entity flapping on hardware whose radio cuts the connection outright during dark spells, which no client-side tuning could survive.
- Brokers that only speak MQTT 3.1.1 are detected automatically and served exactly as before. Every current mosquitto, EMQX and the Home Assistant Mosquitto add-on speak MQTT 5.
Changed: Turning on "Turn screen off after" now warns you first
- Once the display truly powers off, the manufacturer's power management takes over, and depending on the model that means Wi-Fi naps, unavailable entities, a revoked camera or the app being killed outright. Enabling the setting now explains this, in the device settings and the remote admin alike, and points at the Black screensaver as the reliable alternative that keeps the app in control with the panel just as dark.