[BUG] Scrolling longer text (like NINA warnings) "stutters" enormously, making warnings hard to read

[Moonbase59]

Bug report

Describe the bug

Scrolling longer texts—like NINA Warnings—"stutters" a lot, making warnings uncomfortable to read. I think this went smoother on v0.96, but ain't entirely sure. The enclosed GIF recording from Live View doesn't show the stuttering very well, it is much worse on the display.

Text scrolling stops for fractions of a second at different places in the text. I assume higher-priority code interrupts the scrolling to handle other things when this happens.

I know this is mainly a cosmetic issue, but unfortunately the human eye is rather sensitive to irregular scrolling speed when reading scrolling text.

Additional information

• Devices involved:
  • Model: Ulanzi Awtrix Smart Pixel Clock 2882 (TC001)
  • awtrix3 version: v0.98

To Reproduce

I use the following (from Home Assistant/MQTT) to display a NINA warning:

data:
  qos: 2
  retain: false
  payload: |-
    {
      "text": "{{ state_attr("binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1", "headline") | replace("<br/>", " ") | striptags }}: {{ state_attr("binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1", "description") | replace("<br/>", " ") | striptags }}",
      "icon": "9335",
      "pushIcon": 2,
      "repeat": 1
    }
  topic: awtrix1/custom/nina
action: mqtt.publish

Actual NINA text sample from above:

Amtliche WARNUNG vor STURMBÖEN: Es treten Sturmböen mit Geschwindigkeiten zwischen 70 km/h (20 m/s, 38 kn, Bft 8) und 85 km/h (24 m/s, 47 kn, Bft 9) anfangs aus südwestlicher, später aus nordwestlicher Richtung auf. In Schauernähe sowie in exponierten Lagen muss mit schweren Sturmböen bis 100 km/h (28 m/s, 55 kn, Bft 10) gerechnet werden.

Expected behavior

Don't know if that's actually possible to do, but smoother text scrolling for long texts would be superb, especially when a device is used to display warnings.

Screenshots

(See GIF above)

Logs

—

Additional context

—

[distanzcheck]

OT: Hello, which add-on / integration is this?

[Moonbase59]

OT: You mean NINA? Just the official Home Assistant NINA Integration, plus a Markdown Card for the HA Dashboard and some handmade automation to alert me on Awtrix/phone/watch.

[distanzcheck]

OT: Yes, I also have Nina running with me. Would you make your automations available, display on Ulanzi clock ? Dirk

[Blueforcer]

@Moonbase59 how long is your text?
I've tested it with a 380 character string, and it's a very smooth scrolling. Do you use the scroll speed option?

[Moonbase59]

@Blueforcer Counting above (real) text, I get 340 chars. NINA descriptions can be longer, though. I left scroll speed at default (i.e., never change it). Typical NINA headline+description seem to be around 300–500 chars (after striptags).

Experimenting a little more, I can see the same effect (stutter, hickups) when globally activating the "snow" overlay. Indeed looks a bit like something else hitting in (MQTT app updates?). WiFi reception is quite ok (-55 dBm; about 2 metres from the router), and WiFi total 2.4GHz bandwith usage ~11% (as measured by Fritz!Box router). So nothing unusual here.

Then again, I only use one built-in app (Time), and 7 others in the standard loop, plus NINA and notifications when needed.

awtrix1/api/loop currently shows (no NINA warning currently):

{
  "Time": 0,
  "weather": 1,
  "weather_night": 2,
  "weather_fridge": 3,
  "weather_humidity": 4,
  "weather_wind": 5,
  "weather_uv": 6,
  "effect": 7
}

My dev.json is:

{
  "hostname": "awtrix1",
  "matrix": 0,
  "temp_offset": -10.7,
  "temp_dec_places": 1,
  "hum_offset": 8,
  "min_brightnexx": 1,
  "max_brightness": 100,
  "new_year": true
}

My awtrix1/api/stats, if it helps:

{
  "bat": 100,
  "bat_raw": 666,
  "type": 0,
  "lux": 0,
  "ldr_raw": 201,
  "ram": 117564,
  "bri": 2,
  "temp": 20.7,
  "hum": 38,
  "uptime": 196768,
  "wifi_signal": -55,
  "messages": 206395,
  "version": "0.98",
  "indicator1": false,
  "indicator2": false,
  "indicator3": false,
  "app": "weather_night",
  "uid": "awtrix_4276d0",
  "matrix": true,
  "ip_address": "192.168.170.102"
}

Anything else you want me to check?

---

@distanzcheck Yeah, sure, here goes. You'll have to adapt MQTT topics and entity names, and you need icon #9335.

NINA Automation (shows/notifies only warning #1):

alias: NINA-Warnung Krumbach
description: ""
triggers:
  - entity_id: binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1
    trigger: state
actions:
  - choose:
      - conditions:
          - condition: state
            entity_id: binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1
            state: "on"
        sequence:
          - data:
              qos: 2
              retain: false
              payload: |-
                {
                  "text": "{{ state_attr("binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1", "headline") | replace("<br/>", " ") | striptags }}: {{ state_attr("binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1", "description") | replace("<br/>", " ") | striptags }}",
                  "icon": "9335",
                  "pushIcon": 2,
                  "repeat": 1
                }
              topic: awtrix1/custom/nina
            action: mqtt.publish
          - data:
              qos: 2
              retain: false
              payload: |-
                {
                  "color": [255,0,0]
                }
              topic: awtrix1/indicator1
            action: mqtt.publish
          - action: notify.notify
            metadata: {}
            data:
              data:
                priority: high
              title: >-
                NINA-Warnung ({{
                state_attr("binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1",
                "severity") }})
              message: >-
                {{
                state_attr("binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1",
                "headline") }}: {{
                state_attr("binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1",
                "description") }}


                {{
                state_attr("binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1",
                "recommended_actions") }}
      - conditions:
          - condition: state
            entity_id: binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1
            state: "off"
        sequence:
          - data:
              qos: 2
              retain: false
              topic: awtrix1/custom/nina
            action: mqtt.publish
          - data:
              qos: 2
              retain: false
              topic: awtrix1/indicator1
            action: mqtt.publish
          - action: notify.notify
            metadata: {}
            data:
              data:
                priority: high
              title: NINA-Warnung aufgehoben
              message: NINA-Warnung wurde aufgehoben.

Code for a simple dashboard Markdown card:

type: markdown
content: >
  {{
  as_timestamp(state_attr("binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1",
  "sent")) | timestamp_custom('%a %d.%m.%Y %H:%M') }}

  {{ state_attr("binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1",
  "sender") }}


  {{ state_attr("binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1",
  "severity") }}

  {{
  as_timestamp(state_attr("binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1",
  "start")) | timestamp_custom('%a %d.%m.%Y %H:%M') }} – {{
  as_timestamp(state_attr("binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1",
  "expires")) | timestamp_custom('%a %d.%m.%Y %H:%M') }}


  ### {{
  state_attr("binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1",
  "headline") }}


  **{{
  state_attr("binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1",
  "description") }}**



  {{ state_attr("binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1",
  "recommended_actions") }}
visibility:
  - condition: state
    entity: binary_sensor.warning_krumbach_schwaben_st_gunzburg_bayern_1
    state: "on"
title: NINA-Warnung

Notes:

• The automation and dashboard card will only notify warning 1 (the most recent/important).
• On Awtrix, the NINA headline + description will be placed into the app loop, displaying the complete text once per run.
• If warning 1 is "unsafe", the top right indicator 1 gets switched on (red).
• All devices with Home Assistant Companion (phones, watches) will get a notification with headline, description, and recommended action when a NINA warning occurs. Upon end ("safe"), you'll get a notification, too, the Awtrix app is ended, and indicator 1 switched off again.. We don't get any attributes from the integration in this case, so the notification just states "NINA-Warnung aufgehoben".
• The NINA dashboard Markdown card only gets displayed when there is an active NINA warning ("unsafe").

[distanzcheck]

@Moonbase59 Good morning and thank you for the automations, I will customise these entities and then try them out. Thanks again for that

[Moonbase59]

@Blueforcer I totally forgot that I also use the AWTRIX Light Display Card for remote, proxy-able checking the display, which in turn requests a awtrix1/sendscreen every 10 seconds, even when not currently watching the dashboard.

So I tested a little more and disabled that automation, which didn't improve things.

I wonder if we're running into ESP32 performance limits here, or maybe some used library uses blocking code (MQTT?). The only other source of MQTT traffic in my case could be the weather app. Weather data is updated every 15 minutes, but my BLE outdoor & fridge thermometers update more often (every ~15s), resulting in MQTT weather data being updated more often. I'll try to disable the thermometer triggers for a while and see if that improves things.

Would there be any way to further diagnose this, like checking the ESP's CPU load or MQTT traffic?

EDIT: Reducing the weather (temperature) data MQTT traffic from every 15s to every 15min reduced the scroll stutter a lot, but not completely. In my case, this can't be a permanent solution, though. So the question remains: Can this be somehow improved/decoupled?

[distanzcheck]

@Moonbase59 Is it correct that I have to enter the name of my Roland Sie where it now says abitrix 1? and do I have to add anything else after the name?
the message on the smartphone works like this

[Moonbase59]

OT: @distanzcheck: I assume "Roland Sie" should have meant "Ulanzi"? For MQTT, instead of my "awtrix1", just use the prefix that is set in your Web UI, on the MQTT tab.

So, as an example, if yours had awtrix_123456 in there, the nina app topic would be changed from awtrix1/custom/nina to awtrix_123456/custom/nina and so forth.

Docs here: https://blueforcer.github.io/awtrix3/#/README

[distanzcheck]

@Moonbase59 I might have another cool idea. How can I communicate directly with you so that we don't clutter up this post?

[distanzcheck]

@Moonbase59 Kann man bei der Automatisierung Warnungen, in meinem Fall "Hochwasser" herausfiltern das diese nicht angezeigt werden. Und wenn eine zweite (stadt_2) da ist das diese auch angezeigt wird.

[Blueforcer]

Ihr solltet euch woanders treffen fur das Thema. Discord z.b
Hat nichts mit dem issue zu tun

[Moonbase59]

@Blueforcer Any ideas/answers to my questions above?

Here is a short cellphone video that shows the real display:
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/c9caec66-56aa-461b-8dd8-b06148366b22

I wonder if we're running into ESP32 performance limits here, or maybe some used library uses blocking code (MQTT?). The only other source of MQTT traffic in my case could be the weather app. Weather data is updated every 15 minutes, but my BLE outdoor & fridge thermometers update more often (every ~15s), resulting in MQTT weather data being updated more often. I'll try to disable the thermometer triggers for a while and see if that improves things.

Would there be any way to further diagnose this, like checking the ESP's CPU load or MQTT traffic?

EDIT: Reducing the weather (temperature) data MQTT traffic from every 15s to every 15min reduced the scroll stutter a lot, but not completely. In my case, this can't be a permanent solution, though. So the question remains: Can this be somehow improved/decoupled?

@distanzcheck Sorry, I can't currently work on anything new. The AWTRIX and Home Assistant documentation should answer all questions. The Home Assistant Community Forum might be another good place to ask questions, lots of helpful people there!