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  v0.2.0-rc.21 Pre-release

  Cody Bryant released this 2026-08-15 18:46:52 -07:00 | 80 commits to main since this release

  Thanks to @CryingPecan, whose LitterHopper robot
  on ESP 1.4.4 is behind much of what's below. Protocol detail lives in
  docs/devices/litter-robot-4/.

  Added

  • The CLI remembers your robots. provision saves the serial, broker and CA
    under ~/.whiskerless; later commands run bare, and every flag still overrides.
  • robots, use and forget list, pick and drop saved robots — damaged
    profiles are shown as such and can still be removed.
  • A second robot inherits the saved setup — each prompt offers what your robots
    already share, so you type only the serial and the WiFi password.
  • No secret is ever saved: the broker password is per-run (WHISKERLESS_PASSWORD),
    the WiFi passphrase is never kept, the factory certificate is never touched.
  • Provisioning asks for a broker username (optional, and offered from what your
    other robots use) — an authenticated broker used to need --username on every
    later command. The password is still per-run and never written down.
  • Provisioning verifies the WiFi join. A mistyped passphrase used to sail
    through silently — the robot accepted everything, rebooted, and simply never
    appeared on any network. The robot itself names that failure if asked, so
    provisioning now polls the join status and stops with "mistyped WiFi
    password" before touching the broker config; a confirmed join prints the
    robot's IP and moves on early. Firmware that stays silent gets the old wait.
  • whiskerless status — the robot in plain terms from a single fresh reading:
    level, drawer, faults, calibration. It names what needs a listener rather than printing zeros.
  • whiskerless calibrate full|empty stores your own litter reference per robot,
    and refuses a reading that cannot be one. whiskerless panel-reset presses Reset.
  • whiskerless --version, and a bare whiskerless prints an orientation
    instead of a usage error.
  • The CLI shows liveness and color: a spinner on the BLE scan (heartbeat lines
    when piped), banners on the dangerous prompts, NO_COLOR honored.
  • The README covers the whole journey: prerequisites, per-platform installs
    including Homebrew, everyday use, upgrading, the rc channel, uninstalling.
  • Clean cycle and Reset buttons are back, and they work — they synthesise the
    panel's own button press. Proven on ESP 1.1.75 and 1.4.4.
  • Empty cycle and Power buttons, disabled by default and named (danger);
    the CLI gains empty-cycle and power, which prompt first.
  • Pet weight actually works (raw ÷ 100, the cloud's own units) — recent rc
    builds doubled the reading.
  • LitterHopper support: connected, fill gauge, and an out-of-litter alert the
    firmware never raises; the entities enable themselves at the first dispense.
  • Litter level as a percentage — self-calibrating over time, or pinned
    instantly by one button press with the globe filled to the line.
  • New entities: last cat visit, last visit duration, waste drawer last moved,
    panel brightness for bright and dark rooms, and excess-weight detection (the
    stuck-scale condition the robot otherwise only shows on its panel).
  • Activity-derived entities survive a restart instead of reading unknown
    until the next cat visit.
  • New install channels: Homebrew, .deb/.rpm and standalone Linux binaries
    for amd64 and arm64 — none of them need a system Python.
  • The integration has an icon and a logo, shipped inside it and served by
    Home Assistant 2026.3+; older versions simply show what they show today.

  Removed

  • LitterRobot4Client and WhiskerlessAuthError — nothing used them, and
    the client was a third, already-drifting copy of the write-verify loop.

  Fixed

  • The hopper level no longer reads unknown for days after a restart — a gauge
    stranded in the restore cache is carried into the saved options at every startup.
  • brew install sisyphusmd/tap/whiskerless works again (the formula pinned a
    bleak whose build backend Homebrew cannot build), and every release now
    install-tests the formula before the tap publishes.
  • A Bluetooth failure is a sentence too — "BLE scan failed: Bluetooth device is
    turned off" instead of a bleak traceback.
  • A mistyped path is a sentence, not a stack trace: ~ expands everywhere,
    every provision answer is checked at its prompt (including that the CA really
    is a PEM), and file or broker errors print one line — --debug for tracebacks.
  • The serial validator rejects the model number (LR4-0301-00-US) printed
    beside the real serial on the label.
  • --dry-run marks everything it prints, so a simulation no longer describes
    writes that never happened.
  • Hopper entities no longer disappear from a robot that has one — the upgrade
    sweep accepts a recorded fill gauge as proof, since only a dispense produces one.
  • Handling the robot no longer counts as a cat visit — a visit requires the
    beam actually broken, which a hand on the bonnet does not do.
  • The globe motor fault sensor watches the activity stream too — the state
    document stayed at 0 through a real fifty-minute fault.
  • Hopper detection means litter actually delivered — the link register fires
    healthy on a bench and "disconnected" on a refill, so nothing reads it anymore.
  • A robot that dispenses but rarely reports its link keeps its hopper telemetry.
  • The hopper level survives a restart — the last gauge is remembered instead
    of reading unknown until the next dispense.
  • Event sensors appear only once their fact has been reported — some firmware
    never emits a drawer event or a weight, and those sensors sat unknown forever;
    a one-time sweep applies the same standard to existing installs.
  • Last cat visit updates on every robot — it stamps from occupancy, not only
    from weight events, which one robot never sends.
  • Cat detection no longer mistakes weight on the scale for a cat — occupancy
    uses the bit that tracks the animal, not the one a misseated bonnet holds.
  • Fewer unknowns while calibration settles: the calibration reference shows
    the built-in default (marked so) and the hopper level a labelled estimate.
  • The weekday sleep schedule arms every day, not just Sunday.
  • The panel sleep and wake times can actually be set — they now write the
    per-day registers instead of one the firmware only computes.
  • Litter readings are suppressed while the globe is not level — mid-cycle the
    sensors see the globe, not the litter.
  • robotStatus 10 is the clean cycle, and the boot cycle and filter wizard
    are mapped too — unmapped, their readings published as real litter levels.
  • whiskerless set night-light-mode auto works — every accepted spelling
    used to crash.
  • The declared Home Assistant minimum is correct (2025.3.0, not 2025.2.0).
  • Every settings write is verified by read-back, multi-register writes no
    longer lose parts, and broker failures print instead of raising.
  • The hopper no longer drops to unknown on a non-disconnect link code, and one
    dispense cannot prove an empty hopper on its own.
  • The out-of-litter alert judges against your robot's own learned floor —
    floors differ per unit, and a fixed cutoff could cry empty while litter flowed.
  • A restored excess-weight alarm clears once the robot reports the pan clear,
    instead of re-firing on every later visit.
  • A restored globe-motor fault can clear after a missed clear event — a clean
    cycle completing without a fault event is the proof.
  • A detection re-sweep no longer disables entities you enabled yourself.
  • A long cat visit is no longer dropped — the close was matched against a
    90-second window, and the cats that sit longest fell outside it.
  • The first litter reading after a restart is no longer discarded, and a
    hopper's own readings can no longer be undone by the upgrade that enabled it.

  Changed

  • Some entities were renamed, and existing installs are moved with them:
    Start clean cycle → Clean cycle, the two calibration buttons → Calibrate
    full / Calibrate empty, Hopper fill (raw) → Hopper reading, Litter
    calibration reference → Litter reference. Entity IDs you chose yourself are
    left alone; every rename is logged, so check automations that used the old IDs.
  • The raw hopper reading, last dispense and clean-cycle count moved to
    Diagnostics, leaving the sensor list to the things worth a glance.
  • The manual calibration buttons now ship disabled. The robot calibrates
    itself; enable them if you want to pin the scale to a measurement of your own.
  • Litter distances read in millimetres, not inches converted to thirteen
    decimal places — the unit the protocol and the docs use. Per-entity overrides win.
  • Detections remember what proved them, so tightening one rule can no longer
    cost you entities another rule had already earned.
  • All the derived telemetry moved into the library, which is what will let the
    CLI show everything Home Assistant shows without a second implementation.
  • Auto-calibration got a statistics upgrade: a median-based outlier gate keeps
    in-band anomalies (a paw reads like an overfull globe) away from the litter
    anchors, and the hopper floor is learned from declined-into flatline runs — in
    both directions, so a floor that moved up is found as readily as one below.
  • Breaking: binary_sensor.<robot>_waste_drawer_removed is now
    sensor.<robot>_waste_drawer_last_moved — the robot never says which way it moved.
  • Breaking: clean cycle wait time is a number (3–30 minutes), not a select.
  • Breaking (library): Hazard.MOTOR, MotorCommandError and allow_motor
    are gone — a written press is the same event as a physical one. Power still
    requires allow_dangerous.
  • Breaking: switch.<robot>_panel_sleep_mode is now a binary sensor — the
    firmware refuses direct writes, so the switch could only fail; the weekday
    schedule entities are the control.
  • Last visit duration ships disabled and enables at your robot's first report —
    not every robot emits it, and it is not a firmware split.
  • Release binaries and the macOS installer carry the version in the filename
    (whiskerless-<version>-linux-x86_64); the scheme is in packaging/README.md.

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  • whiskerless-0.2.0-rc.21-linux-arm64
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  • whiskerless-0.2.0-rc.21-linux-x86_64
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  • whiskerless-0.2.0-rc.21-macos-arm64.pkg
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  • whiskerless-0.2.0-rc.21-macos-x86_64.pkg
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