PCCOOLER-LCD Control 3.0.0 Beta 14

Beta 14 adds a practical native-media startup workflow.

The CP3 has now been confirmed to store and decode uploaded MP4 files locally. This provides smooth video playback without streaming PNG frames.

Prepare a one-hour repeated MP4

pccooler-lcd-control media-loop-prepare \
  ~/Pictures/pccooler-images/4-3.mp4 \
  --output ~/Pictures/pccooler-images/4-3-cp3-loop.mp4 \
  --duration-minutes 60

Prepare, upload, and activate

Dry run:

pccooler-lcd-control native-media-activate \
  ~/Pictures/pccooler-images/4-3.mp4 \
  --duration-minutes 60

Execute:

systemctl --user stop pccooler-lcd-control.service

pccooler-lcd-control native-media-activate \
  ~/Pictures/pccooler-images/4-3.mp4 \
  --duration-minutes 60 \
  --remote-name startup.mp4 \
  --execute \
  --verbose \
  --trace /tmp/native-media-upload.json

Power-cycle the CP3 if playback does not start immediately.

Show the recorded state

pccooler-lcd-control native-media-status

Important limitation

The official Windows application sends additional commands that restore hardware-info overlays and true looping. Those commands are not yet recovered.

Beta 14 creates one long repeated MP4 as a temporary workaround. It does not claim to reproduce the Windows overlay behavior yet.

Device inspection and USB reset

Inspect the detected CP3 and its Linux USB path:

pccooler-lcd-control inspect-device

Reset an internally connected CP3 without unplugging it:

systemctl --user stop pccooler-lcd-control.service
pccooler-lcd-control reset-device --sudo

The reset command resolves the serial port to its parent USB device and verifies that its VID/PID is 1d6b:0112 before changing the sysfs authorized state. It refuses to reset an unrelated USB device and refuses to continue while the serial port is owned by another process.

Automatic reconnect

Long-running dashboards now wait for the CP3 to return after a USB reset or brief disconnect. The transport uses bounded exponential backoff and resumes with the existing frame loop once the serial device becomes available again.

Verbose mode shows the transition:

CP3 unavailable: ... Waiting for reconnect...
CP3 reconnected on /dev/ttyACM0.

The systemd user service also retains restart-on-failure protection for errors that cannot be recovered inside the process.