wled-screen-controller-mixed/BRAINSTORM.md

Feature Brainstorm — LED Grab

New Automation Conditions (Profiles)

Right now profiles only trigger on app detection. High-value additions:

• Time-of-day / Schedule — "warm tones after sunset, off at midnight." Schedule-based value sources pattern already exists
• Display state — detect monitor on/off/sleep, auto-stop targets when display is off
• System idle — dim or switch to ambient effect after N minutes of no input
• Sunrise/sunset — fetch local solar times, drive circadian color temperature shifts
• Webhook/MQTT trigger — let external systems activate profiles without HA integration

New Output Targets

Currently: WLED, Adalight, AmbileD, DDP. Potential:

• MQTT publish — generic IoT output, any MQTT subscriber becomes a target
• Art-Net / sACN (E1.31) — stage/theatrical lighting protocols, DMX controllers
• OpenRGB — control PC peripherals (keyboard, mouse, RAM, fans) as ambient targets
• HTTP webhook — POST color data to arbitrary endpoints
• Recording target — save color streams to file for playback later

New Color Strip Sources

• Spotify / media player — album art color extraction or tempo-synced effects
• Weather — pull conditions from API, map to palettes (blue=rain, orange=sun, white=snow)
• Camera / webcam — border-sampling from camera feed for video calls or room-reactive lighting
• Script source — user-written JS/Python snippets producing color arrays per frame
• Notification reactive — flash/pulse on OS notifications (optional app filter)

Processing Pipeline Extensions

• Palette quantization — force output to match a user-defined palette
• Zone grouping — merge adjacent LEDs into logical groups sharing one averaged color
• Color temperature filter — warm/cool shift separate from hue shift (circadian/mood)
• Noise gate — suppress small color changes below threshold, preventing shimmer on static content

Multi-Instance & Sync

• Multi-room sync — multiple instances with shared clock for synchronized effects
• Multi-display unification — treat 2-3 monitors as single virtual display for seamless ambilight
• Leader/follower mode — one target's output drives others with optional delay (cascade)

UX & Dashboard

• PWA / mobile layout — mobile-first layout + "Add to Home Screen" manifest
• Scene presets — bundled source + filters + brightness as one-click presets ("Movie night", "Gaming")
• Live preview on dashboard — miniature screen with LED colors rendered around its border
• Undo/redo for calibration — reduce frustration in the fiddly calibration editor
• Drag-and-drop filter ordering — reorder postprocessing filter chains visually

API & Integration

• WebSocket event bus — broadcast all state changes over a single WS channel
• OBS integration — detect active scene, switch profiles; or use OBS virtual camera as source
• Plugin system — formalize extension points into documented plugin API with hot-reload

Creative / Fun

• Effect sequencer — timeline-based choreography of effects, colors, and transitions
• Music BPM sync — lock effect speed to detected BPM (beat detection already exists)
• Color extraction from image — upload photo, extract palette, use as gradient/cycle source
• Transition effects — crossfade, wipe, or dissolve between sources/profiles instead of instant cut

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Deep Dive: Notification Reactive Source

Type: New ColorStripSource (source_type: "notification") — normally outputs transparent RGBA, flashes on notification events. Designed to be used as a layer in a composite source so it overlays on top of a persistent base (gradient, effect, screen capture, etc.).

Trigger modes (both active simultaneously)

1. OS listener (Windows) — pywinrt + Windows.UI.Notifications.Management.UserNotificationListener. Runs in background thread, pushes events to source via queue. Windows-only for now; macOS (pyobjc + NSUserNotificationCenter) and Linux (dbus + org.freedesktop.Notifications) deferred to future.
2. Webhook — POST /api/v1/notifications/{source_id}/fire with optional body { "app": "MyApp", "color": "#FF0000" }. Always available, cross-platform by nature.

Source config

os_listener: true           # enable Windows notification listener
app_filter:
  mode: whitelist|blacklist  # which apps to react to
  apps: [Discord, Slack, Telegram]
app_colors:                  # user-configured app → color mapping
  Discord: "#5865F2"
  Slack: "#4A154B"
  Telegram: "#26A5E4"
default_color: "#FFFFFF"     # fallback when app has no mapping
effect: flash|pulse|sweep    # visual effect type
duration_ms: 1500            # effect duration

Effect rendering

Source outputs RGBA color array per frame:

• Idle: all pixels (0,0,0,0) — composite passes through base layer
• Flash: instant full-color, linear fade to transparent over duration_ms
• Pulse: sine fade in/out over duration_ms
• Sweep: color travels across the strip like a wave

Each notification starts its own mini-timeline from trigger timestamp (not sync clock).

Overlap handling

New notification while previous effect is active → restart timer with new color. No queuing.

App color resolution

1. Webhook body color field (explicit override) → highest priority
2. app_colors mapping by app name
3. default_color fallback

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Top Picks (impact vs effort)

1. Time-of-day + idle profile conditions — builds on existing profile/condition architecture
2. MQTT output target — opens the door to an enormous IoT ecosystem
3. Scene presets — purely frontend, bundles existing features into one-click UX