S.T.A.R.E. 1.0.3

Prepared: 22 October 2026. Standard S.T.A.R.E. 4 MB ESP32 hardware (esp32dev-4mb).

What is new

• Eyelids and blinking. Fit lids to an eye design, choose a supplied colour palette, adjust their shape and shading, and add natural blinking or lid closure to arranged looks. Existing designs keep their appearance until edited.
• Richer display colour. Hardware colour-response presets improve midtones and contrast, with optional fine tuning in Device & Updates.
• A clearer Workshop. Saved eyes appear in the design drawer. Saved movements have a scrolling drawer with position diagrams, Supplied/Yours labels and selected-item tools for renaming, exporting and removal.
• Vintage boot and installation screens. Sepia stationery carries readable network instructions, the installed version and installation progress. Progress drawing avoids repeatedly clearing the labels and bar.
• Quieter updates. Connected control pages pause their background traffic during installation, show a notice and reconnect afterwards without discarding unfinished work in other tabs.
• Recovery instructions on the eyes. If an update needs repair, the screens keep the connection details and “Retry the update” instructions visible. The recovery page is built into the firmware, so it works without the normal web interface. Only the unchanged factory access-point password is shown.
• Bitmap display API. External controllers can temporarily display an image on either eye or both. The Image Desk converts ordinary image files; Return eyes releases the display. Images sent this way are not saved in the Cabinet.

Corrections and storage

• Saved or renamed eyes update their drawer tile immediately.
• Confirmed performance saves apply the returned display status, so the Cabinet lamp reflects the eye the apparatus reports displaying.
• Movement removal failures are reported inside the confirmation window.
• Splitting the web application into compressed assets reduces the largest temporary file needed during future web updates.
• Unused supplied bitmap artwork can be removed to recover space. Artwork used by a saved eye or performance remains protected.

Fresh installations include expressive examples such as The Cartoon Companion, Forty Winks and The Sneaky Regard. These example additions are factory content; updating an existing apparatus keeps its Cabinet rather than inserting them. Fresh kits omit the old Cute Green, Evil128 and Frog bitmaps. Existing users' artwork is not automatically deleted. The Watchful Owl still uses bitmap artwork.

Updating an existing apparatus

Use stare-esp32dev_release-1.0.3-update.bin, the preserving firmware-and-web update for the standard 4 MB ESP32 kit. Download a Cabinet backup first, install through Device & Updates, keep power connected and refresh the page after restart.

Direct preserving upgrades from 1.0.0, 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 were tested with this exact release binary, including saved work, artwork, Wi-Fi and restart persistence. No intermediate update is required. Exact stable-binary results and checksums are recorded in the release archive.

Known limitation: restoring an older Cabinet backup may replace the friendly names of four legacy bitmap designs with filename-style names. Their artwork, settings and performance pairings remain intact. Normal firmware upgrades preserve those names. This cosmetic issue is deferred.

Factory full images are for USB manufacturing or deliberate resets. They erase Wi-Fi and saved work and are not the normal customer update.