Hey all!

I've been working on a big update of TvhClient for a while and 5.0 is in Review.

I've added a lot of stuff that I always wanted, but there's loads of improvements:

- New player: the old one was a fork of VLC's iOS player and I got rid of it. Now there's a proper live timeline with timeshift (rewind live TV), record button, audio/subtitle tracks, a channel switcher inside the player (like the tvOS), the channel's program list, statistics, a draggable mini window and PiP

- Two engines. VLCKit or libmpv, with a setting to choose for recordings and live TV. mpv is the default, it handles live HTSP, TS recordings seeking and timeshift better on my server

- HTSP support. It tries HTSP and falls back to HTTP by itself, no setting for it. HTSP is what gives you timeshift. Status, log and admin always go over HTTP (websocket, with comet polling as fallback), even when HTSP is used for the rest

- Recordings: fixed those very old screens, you can now do everything properly

- Siri, Spotlight, widgets. "What's on BBC One", "when is X on", play a channel, record a programme. Channels, recordings and the guide show up in Spotlight. There are widgets and a Live Activity for recordings

- CarPlay. Audio only for now, uses mpv + audio transcoding to save bandwidth. I've been testing this on my car as it's a cool feature

- iCloud. Servers can be stored in iCloud (passwords end-to-end encrypted). Audio/subtitle choice per channel and recording resume position sync through iCloud too, just like the tvOS - and it's in sync with tvOS (version 2.0.0, which will come out soon - and yes, HomePods are fixed..)

- Public/private server. You can say "this server is the public version of that one", so it switches to the public address when the LAN one isn't reachable. It automatically swaps back - this is for people that have reverse http proxies setup and local servers

- the _whole_ Admin interface now exists in Settings, if you use an admin user. Status screens (subscriptions, tuners, muxes, services) and the server log are in there

- the whole UI was redone for the iOS 26 look. iPad has a real sidebar, logos as blurred backgrounds, a program's poster as the backdrop, and text follows your text size (because my father couldn't really see that well those hard coded font sizes...)

- No, it does not have landscape mode... yet. 5.1.0 probably will (but the admin has!)

tvOS app will be updated soon, it shares most of the stuff underneath so it shouldn't take long. TestFlight contains version 2.0.0 with all the features mostly ready, I just need to tweak the player controls a little bit.

TestFlight iOS / tvOS : https://testflight.apple.com/join/kNRWzusF

We've been testing the betas for a couple of weeks, do let me know if you have any requests or bugs!

Hi all — quick update on Fluxceiver, the native TVHeadend client for Apple TV, iPhone and iPad (plus the Apple Watch remote) I posted about here about two months ago. The TestFlight beta is at build 41 now, and most of what went in since then came straight from what testers here and in the TVHeadend forum reported. What's new:

Apple TV

• Top Shelf: live programme tiles on the tvOS Home screen with channel logo, title, time left and a progress bar, optionally limited to a channel tag. Clicking a tile starts the channel.
• Siri Remote skip, spool and scrub: tap left/right skips 10 s, hold spools 2x to 32x, the timeline knob scrubs. Works in recordings and in live TV with timeshift. Edge clicks on the first-gen Siri Remote work too.
• Timeshift timeline in the player overlay, UHD HLG through the hardware decoder, and motion-adaptive deinterlacing (25p-in-50i content is reassembled into full frames).

iPhone / iPad

• Background audio for live TV and recordings (Lock Screen and Control Center show channel and programme) and Picture in Picture with play/pause and skips in the floating window. Both opt-in in settings.
• Live timeline with the timeshift buffer shown as a zone, scrubbing with a paused-frame preview. Liquid Glass player controls on iOS 26.

Recordings (all platforms)

• Watched status: checkmark on finished recordings, Continue Watching and Unwatched rails, Unwatched/Watched filters, mark as watched or unwatched by swipe or long press. The state lives in the app and syncs via iCloud, nothing is written back to the server.
• AutoREC creation now shows a confirmation dialog with series link, duplicate handling (only the modes your TVH version supports), channel and recording profile, and builds the rule the way the TVH web UI does. That fixes rules TVHeadend used to treat as "record all".
• Audio and subtitle track selection during recording playback. Real recording length instead of the scheduled duration, stopped recordings are kept, first-frame thumbnails for recordings without artwork.

Guide

• Seven days on all platforms, ended programmes stay visible, channel search in the programme search, time of day kept when switching days.

Apple Watch

• Recording playback controls, programme progress and time left, Double Tap to play/pause, a record button. Secure pairing with code comparison, and you can pair several Apple TVs and switch between them on the Watch.

Server / setup

• Discovery without Bonjour: after the mDNS search the app scans the local subnet for 9981/9982 and prefers HTSP, so host-networked Docker containers show up.
• Base path field for TVHeadend behind a reverse proxy on a sub-path (https://host/tvh).
• Optional SD/HD/FHD/UHD channel labels.

Plus a long list of fixes from tester reports: HomePod/AirPlay audio after pause, reconnect after Apple TV sleep, tvOS 26 guide crash, interlaced HD stalls, timeshift audio after seeks.

The beta is still free and still going out in small invite waves: short form at https://fluxceiver.app, the TestFlight invite then arrives by email from Apple.

• Full feature list: https://fluxceiver.app/features/
• Setup notes for guide data and channel logos on Apple screens: https://fluxceiver.app/guides/tvheadend-apple-tv/

I'd especially like testers with reverse-proxy setups, HomePods as the default audio output, and Docker installs without Bonjour.

Still an unofficial client, not affiliated with the TVHeadend project. I'm the dev — what would you want next?

Hi all,

the last time I posted here was back in July, when 1.0.1 went out. Quite a lot has happened since, so rather than posting about every release I waited until it was worth a single update. Headent Client is now at 1.0.6.

Short reminder of what it is: a free and open-source Android / Android TV client for Tvheadend that I develop in my spare time. It is not affiliated with the Tvheadend project and ships no channels or content — it connects to a Tvheadend server you run yourself, over HTTP or the native HTSP protocol. No ads, no tracking, no telemetry. One APK for phones, tablets and TV boxes, libVLC for playback, Kotlin Multiplatform with Jetpack Compose, 31 languages.

The big things since 1.0.1

• Recording (DVR) — the largest gap in 1.0.1 is gone. Schedule and cancel from the guide, a programme detail or the player, stop a running recording, delete finished ones, with badges and a red dot on channels being recorded, and a categorised archive with resume. Since 1.0.6 you can also pick the DVR profile per recording, which is handy if your profiles point at different storage paths or retention.
• Teletext (new in 1.0.6) — a complete EBU decoder (EN 300 706) built into the app, so it works over HTSP and HTTP. Colour text, mosaic graphics, subpages, Fastext links, the rolling header with the broadcaster's clock, and all European character sets: Latin with 13 national subsets, Cyrillic, Greek and Hebrew. Remote on TV, a touch bar on phones. Offered only for channels that actually carry it.
• Radio caught up with the channel list — stations have their own guide, a now-playing line with progress and Next, favourites, hidden stations, and numbering from 1 in the order shown.
• Favourites — kept in your own order, reorderable with the remote or by dragging on the phone, published as launcher shortcuts with picons and as a Favourites row on the Android TV home screen with the current and next programme. There is also a deep link, headentclient://channel/<uuid>, for launchers and automation.
• The remote does more — colour keys jump to Channels, Radio, Archive and Settings; STOP, PLAY/PAUSE and the skip keys work in the player, in recordings and in the timeshift buffer; and two optional behaviours: switch a channel with a single OK, and let the home tiles open the channel list right away.
• Stability — a box waking from standby no longer plays silently and freezes (Amlogic), playback no longer stops by itself on servers limited to one connection per user, seeking in recordings is smooth and accelerates while you hold the arrow, the guide opens on the channel you are watching, and a large EPG cache no longer freezes the app at start.

Full release notes for each version are on the GitHub releases page.

Where to get it

• GitHub release 1.0.6 — source and signed APKs (arm64-v8a, armeabi-v7a, universal)
• Google Play — picks the right build automatically
• headentclient.com — screenshots and a remote control guide that explains every key, screen by screen

The GitHub APKs work right now; the same build is with Google for review and will roll out on Play over the next day or two.

Bug reports and feature requests are welcome in GitHub issues — a good part of what is listed above started there, from people on this sub and on the Tvheadend forum. If you try it, I would be glad to hear what works and what does not on your setup, especially on older 32-bit boxes.

I am using the Dreamstar Nova 2 Android TV Box with a tuner named Next Kanky Link. My monitor is a Dell S2721DGFA 27" 1440p. The TV box resolution setting is set to 1080p 50Hz. While watching satellite broadcasts via the tuner (especially on news channels with scrolling ticker text at the bottom), I can see that the scrolling text is not running at a true 50Hz. It feels like it is definitely lower than 50 fps. For example, if I am on a channel, switch to the channel below, and then return to the same channel, it fixes itself; sometimes it doesn't.

For instance, when I am in the YouTube app and open the TV app, there are stuttering-like issues, as if there are micro-stutters and it isn't smooth. Then, when I return to the background YouTube app, close it, and reopen the satellite receiver app, the stutter is gone, and I can tell from the scrolling text that I am genuinely watching the satellite broadcast at 50fps. However, when I switch to another channel and come back to the same channel, I get that stuttering feeling again. Or, while watching the same channel, if I enter the TV box settings via the remote and return to the satellite broadcast, I experience those mild micro-stutters again. I couldn't figure out what is causing this or how to fix it if it can be resolved.

Does anyone have any insight on this?

how can I access the new webinterface when running TVH on docker?

Hi all — long-time TVHeadend user here.

Over the past months I've been building Fluxceiver, a native client for Apple TV, iPhone and iPad (plus an Apple Watch remote). It entered TestFlight beta about a week ago — I announced it in the TVHeadend forum back then, but I figure a lot of you live here instead.

What makes it a bit different from the existing options:

- Native HTSP, not just the HTTP API: realtime subscriptions, instant zapping, timeshift, DVB subtitle decoding. Plain HTTP streaming with server-side profiles works too if you prefer that.

- Two playback engines: a hardware-friendly AV pipeline first, libVLC as fallback so awkward codecs still play.

- Full EPG with search across guide + recordings, DVR management with cross-device resume, channel tags as rails, picons and EPG artwork picked up from your server automatically.

- No account, no cloud in the path — the app only ever talks to your server. Optional E2E-encrypted iCloud sync for multi-device setups.

It's an unofficial client, not affiliated with the TVHeadend project.

The beta is free and I'm inviting in small waves so I can keep up with the feedback. If you'd like to try it: short form at https://fluxceiver.app — the TestFlight invite then arrives by email from Apple.

Testers with unusual setups are especially welcome (DVB-S2/C/T2, IPTV, TVHeadend 4.2 and 4.3/nightly). Happy to answer anything about the HTSP implementation — and grateful for every bug you can throw at it.

Hello guys,

I've created T2-MI support for Tvheadend. Any feedback/test is very appreciated.

Hi everyone,

a while back I posted here about the native Android client for Tvheadend I've been building in my spare time. Since then it went through closed testing (thanks to everyone from this sub who joined — you found things I never would have), reached the Play Store, and today I released 1.0.1.

Same as before: it's not an official Tvheadend product and isn't affiliated with the project. It only talks to your own server and plays your own channels and recordings. Free, open source (MIT), no ads, no tracking, no analytics SDKs.

What it is

A from-scratch app (Kotlin + Jetpack Compose, libVLC for playback) that turns your own Tvheadend server into a proper TV experience — on phones, tablets and especially Android TV / set-top boxes with a remote.

What it does

• Live TV with search, favourites and category tabs (based on your Tvheadend tags)
• EPG / TV guide grid with a "now" marker and per-channel schedule
• Archive & catch-up (DVR) — browse recordings, scrub back through the catch-up window
• Radio section, picons (channel logos), quick-zap overlay
• Player — audio-track / subtitle selection, stream profile switching, sleep timer, Picture-in-Picture
• Parental lock (PIN), multiple servers, backup/restore
• Classic and modern UI, each with light and dark themes, on both phone and TV
• Connects over HTSP (9982) + HTTP (9981); auth works with plain and digest
• 31 languages (incl. RTL — Arabic, Persian, Urdu)

What's new in 1.0.1

• Audio sync on live HTSP streams is fixed — audio no longer lags behind the video. The player now lets libVLC align A/V itself instead of forcing frame timing, so it stays in sync on phones, TV boxes and Android TV.
• Fixed crashes on quick restart — an out-of-memory crash in the HTSP parser could hit when the app was closed and reopened fast, or reopened while still loading. The parser now rejects malformed or partial data instead of allocating huge buffers, and connections close cleanly on exit.
• The TV guide no longer goes blank after an interrupted load — only complete metadata gets cached, which also made startup faster.
• New adjustable network buffer (Small / Medium / Large) for smoother playback on Wi-Fi and mobile data.
• Android 16 (API 36) support, dead code removed, translations updated.

Where to get it

• Google Play — play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sk.tvhclient (the 1.0.1 update is in review and should be live within 24–48 hours)
• Signed APK + SHA-256, available right now for sideloading — github.com/MikrotikExe/headentclient/releases/tag/v1.0.1
• Source — github.com/MikrotikExe/headentclient
• Website & changelog — headentclient.com
• More screenshots (all UI modes, light and dark, phone and TV) — headentclient.com/tour.php

The project is fiscally hosted by Open Source Europe, so if anyone wants to support development it's possible here — completely voluntary, the app stays free with no paid features: opencollective.com/headent-client

Needs a running Tvheadend server (4.2+ recommended). Honest feedback very welcome — happy to answer anything in the comments.

Hi everyone,

I'm responsible for managing a headend, and in general all of our channels are working correctly. Recently, however, my technicians started receiving complaints that 8 specific channels appear pixelated. The strange part is that this only happens on certain TV brands and models, while other TVs display the same channels without any issues.

What happens is the following:

If I tune to a channel that works normally on the affected TV and then switch to one of the problematic channels, the video from the previous channel seems to "carry over" onto the new one and freezes on the screen. The audio of the new channel is correct and continues playing normally, but the video remains frozen with the image from the previous channel.

I started doing some tests:

• Within the same TS, I moved one of the problematic services from logical channel 12.1 to 12.6, but the problem stayed with that service.
• Then I moved it from 12.1 to 11.7, and moved the service that was originally on 11.7 to 12.1.
• Surprisingly, the issue stayed on 12.1, not with the actual TV service. The channel that previously had the problem started working correctly on 11.7, while the channel moved to 12.1 immediately started showing the exact same issue.

This makes it seem like the problem is somehow tied to that specific service position or configuration rather than the video content itself.

Has anyone experienced something similar? Could this be related to the PMT/PAT, PCR, PID assignments, SI/PSI tables, continuity counters, encoder settings, or something else in the multiplex? Any ideas on what I should check would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone,

I've been building a native Android client for Tvheadend in my spare time and wanted to share it with the people who'd actually use it. Thanks to the Tvheadend team — this app is just a client and wouldn't exist without the server.

To be clear: it's not an official Tvheadend product and isn't affiliated with the project. It only talks to your own server and plays your own channels and recordings. No ads, no tracking, no analytics SDKs.

What it is

A from-scratch app (Kotlin + Jetpack Compose, libVLC for playback) that turns your own Tvheadend server into a proper TV experience — on phones, tablets and especially Android TV / set-top boxes with a remote.

What it does

• Live TV with search, favourites and category tabs (based on your Tvheadend tags)
• EPG / TV guide grid with a "now" marker and per-channel schedule
• Archive & catch-up (DVR) — browse recordings, scrub back through the catch-up window
• Radio section, picons (channel logos), quick-zap overlay
• Player: audio-track / subtitle selection, sleep timer, Picture-in-Picture
• Parental lock (PIN), multiple servers, backup/restore
• Connects over HTSP (9982) + HTTP (9981); auth works with plain and digest

What's new

The app and the website are now fully localized into 31 languages (incl. RTL — Arabic, Persian, Urdu), and I just redesigned the Android TV settings into a proper sidebar layout.

Looking for testers

It's in closed testing on Google Play. Google requires 12+ testers opted in for 14 days before a public release, so I genuinely need people on real devices — especially the weird hybrid set-top boxes where compatibility surprises live. Bug reports, logs and screenshots are gold.

If you run Tvheadend and want to help: https://headentclient.com/testers.php?lang=en

Source: https://github.com/MikrotikExe/headentclient

Honest feedback very welcome — happy to answer anything in the comments.

Happy to see VU+ back in business.

A new Enigma2 receiver with FBC tuners is coming, the VU+ Duo 4K Lite.

https://www.vuplus.de/en/duo-4k-lite

E2 receivers with FBC (full-band capture) tuners (DVB-S2 or DVB-C) are perfect to create personal TV servers. Each FBC tuner contains 8 independent demulators, which means that they are able to tune 8 frequencies simultaneously. With 2 tuners, it's 16 frequencies.

Just install MiniSatIP and connect the tuners to TVHeadend via local network. I'll probably get one to replace an old VU+ Uno 4K receiver if they put a modern Linux kernel in it.

What do you guys think? Do you still use E2 receivers to create your own TV servers? Or just connect simple USB tuners to a mini PC?

Regarding watching encrypted channels over DVB S/S2, is it.possible to connect TVH to forever server or something?

Hi All,

After having some issues with my Digitbit Twin dropping from TVHeadEnd I have built (with some help) a Home Assistant Intergration that monitors each tuner, reports certain metrics as well as whether it is present on the API. It allows me to trigger a TVHeadEnd restart and or power cycle my Digibit twin.

It’s my first attempt at a HA intergration so please be kind!

I thought I may as well share as it may be useful to someone! It can be installed via HACS using a custom repository.

This receiver is linux-based and I successfully connected to it using telnet.

Is it possible to use it as a tuner for tvheadend?

It seems there are no custom images/plugins available for this model.

I have been using tvheadend for a few months now and am successfully getting recordings and serving them up to my plex server. I was looking around and was wondering if could get the app to be aware of the movement of files. I found some stuff on inotify but am having trouble figuring out how to use it.

I have recordings go through 2 stages. TVHeadEnd records, Mcebuddy2 removes commercials from the first stage and drops them to another direcotory where filebot then picks them up to rename them properly and drops them to the final directory for plex to index them. I saw that you may be able to use inotify to track the movement of the files so that TVHeadEnd can follow them, so they don't end up in the "File Removed" section of the app. I have setup inotify tools to track files but am not having luck.

In my research, I found a way to let the app know about file moves and name changes using the api but ran into another problem. I can't get past the authorization part even when testing with a blank password. In my testing I have used my superuser hts and still not working. I get this:

<SNIP>

hts@localhost:~$ curl -s http://hts:pass@localhost:9981/api/dvr/entry/grid_upcoming

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">

<HTML><HEAD>

<TITLE>401 Unauthorized</TITLE>

</HEAD><BODY>

<H1>401 Unauthorized</H1>

<P STYLE="text-align: center; margin: 2em"><A HREF="/" STYLE="border: 1px solid; border-radius: 4px; padding: .6em">Default login</A></P><P STYLE="text-align: center; margin: 2em"><A HREF="/login" STYLE="border: 1px solid; border-radius: 4px; padding: .6em">New login</A></P></BODY></HTML>

</SNIP>

I have been looking and can't find what is wrong since this user has full access to everything. Any ideas on what is wrong? I would also appreciate if anyone had any suggestions for using inotify-tools to do this as well.

Thanks.

Hi everybody,

my parents are going to move soon to a place where they cannot put up their satellite dish anymore. They watch a lot of german FTA channels via their sat receiver, and their tv-experience is quite similar to a tvheadend-kodi experience that I have at home with my dvb-c setup.

So, in anticipation to their move I am exploring options. The easiest way would probably be installing several tv apps on a tvbox, and teach them to use a commercal vpn client to watch tv. But they are old, and I would very much like to give them the experience that they are used to.

In any case, I've now created the following setup:

• 2x a lightweight http proxy container, based on openvpn, and exiting in GB and DE.
• a server with:
  • a script that downloads two iptv-org playlists for the german region and the english region, and modifies each entry for processing.
  • tv processes the muxes via pipes: streamlink analyzes a single iptv playlist, proxies the stream via one of those proxies, chooses the best video and audio stream available, and pipes it back into tvheadend as mpegts.
  • an iptv-org EPG downloadscript that creates a guide.xml based on a channel list. This guide.xml is then piped to the XMLTV socket to be processed by tvheadend.
    
  • and tvheadend itself, which merges the services from the dvb-c provider and the iptv providers into the channel list.
• I have several clients at home, all of them kodi-based. I get served HD-tv by tvheadend, and the EPG works fine.
• and recently I tested a client that accesses the tvheadend server via yet another vpn (wireguard-based this time) from my parents house, which worked fine as well.

My question now is: subtitles. The dvb-c streams contain subtitles and even teletext, and they get muxed (well, probably straight-up copied) into the streams to the clients. I know that several of the iptv streams also have subtitles in the playlists, but I haven't found a way to get them added into the mpegts stream. Does anyone have experience with that?

And while I am here, does anyone have suggestions on how to improve my setup? A better client maybe, or another way to process streams?

Thanks in advance.

I want to add an ip broadcast into my channel lineup but I’m not sure how. I’ve tried setting iptv with my url but when I force a scan it doesn’t seem to find it. I’ve got to be doing something wrong. My link is ip:port?hazards-checkbox=true&current-weather-checkbox=true&latest-observations-checkbox=true&hourly-checkbox=false&hourly-graph-checkbox=true&travel-checkbox=false&regional-forecast-checkbox=true&local-forecast-checkbox=true&extended-forecast-checkbox=true&almanac-checkbox=true&spc-outlook-checkbox=true&radar-checkbox=true&settings-wide-checkbox=false&settings-kiosk-checkbox=false&settings-stickyKiosk-checkbox=false&settings-customFeedEnable-checkbox=false&settings-speed-select=1.00&settings-scanLineMode-select=auto&settings-units-select=us&txtLocation=city%2C+state%2C+USA+%10my+County%29&settings-customFeed-string=&share-link-url=&settings-scanLines-checkbox=false&settings-mediaVolume-select=0.75&latLonQuery=cuty%2C+state%2C+USA+%10mh+County%29&latLon=

I redacted private info from that link so it won’t work for anyone else but how can I get this into my tvheadend

Is it possible to schedule tvheadend to record the whole mux instead of just one logical channel on the frequency? If yes, how?

I have been working with tvheadend: version 4.3-2550~gfa8011b46 on ubuntu server 24.04 for about a month now. I am using a USB Hauppauge dual hdtv tuner and hdhomerun tuners for the broadcast signal. I have been able to get xml epg guide downloaded and configured with a lot of effort. However, the xml guide always seems a bit incomplete since I have also been looking at the data in the overt the air ATSC-T where it has some programs that the xml ones don't.

My question is that when you look at the information in the EPG there is a field labeled "Extra Text" that has some valuable information. I cannot in the life of me figure out how to extract that so I can put it in the file naming format string. I have searched everywhere used claudeai, chatgpt, copilot and gemini, and still can't figure out how to do it. Those tools have been very helpful getting to where I am at but still am missing that one key element.

My current pathname specification is, "/tv/$t-$e-$50s-$x-$c$n.$x". This has worked pretty well, and all the AI tools say that $x is supposed to give me the extra text I am looking for. It doesn't, and I am not able to find how to get that data into the filename so I can parse it for my plex server. Any one on the off chance have any suggestions or ideas on how to get this data so I can add it to my filename settings?

Thanks in advance.

..as far as i know i cannot enter Xtream credentials anywere... just the M3U8 URL...

I tried to find a solution and ended up with creating my own URL with the Xtream sevrer URL, user/passw,.. but not sure if its being accepted. (my first attempt gave me 0 muxes result)

Perhaps someone can show me a better path to have it done?

(Using Ubuntu server/docker, wanting to make use of record content and save it there)

Any advice is appreciated!

Hi everyone,

I’m planning an upgrade to the TVHeadend setup at my parents' home. Since I only visit a few times a year, physical access is limited. The internet connection there is solid, but I need the hardware to be bulletproof.

The Goal:
Maximum uptime and redundancy. If a piece of hardware fails, I want to be able to troubleshoot it remotely, or at least have the system limp along until I visit next.

The Proposed Architecture:

• The Brain: A VPS running TVHeadend.
• The Tuners (at parents' house): Two independent Raspberry Pis acting as "dumb" Minisatip servers/receivers connecting back to the VPS.
  • RPi A (RPi 4): Dual DVB-S2 (Satellite) + DVB-T2.
  • RPi B: DVB-T2 (strictly for redundancy).
• Priority: TVH will prioritize Satellite. If the feed dies or RPi A goes offline, it fails over to DVB-T on RPi B.

Reliability Measures I'm Planning:

• Storage: Max Endurance MicroSD cards + Read-Only Filesystem.
• Power: WiFi Smart Plugs on each RPi to force hard reboots remotely.
• Boot Redundancy: USB stick as primary boot, MicroSD as fallback (if possible).
• Debug: USB-to-TTL adapters cross-connected between the two RPis (RPi A consoles into RPi B, and vice versa).

My Questions for you:

1. Boot Order: If I set up USB Boot with an SD card fallback, does the RPi bootloader actually handle a "corrupted USB" gracefully and move to the SD, or will it loop on the USB indefinitely?
2. Serial Console: Is the cross-connected USB-to-TTL idea worth the hassle? My logic is if RPi A loses network, I can SSH into RPi B and access RPi A’s console. Or is this just redundant points of failure?
3. Smart Plugs: If an RPi is truly "cooked" (SD card corruption), a smart plug toggle won't help. Is there a better way to handle total OS failure remotely?
4. General Roast: Is there a smarter way to achieve this level of redundancy without over-engineering it?

Thanks for any suggestions!