firmware/docs/hardware-testing.md

Hardware testing

CI installs the package into a replica of the printer -- the real rootfs.squashfs running under qemu-mipsel, on the printer's own busybox and unTar (see printer-replica.md) -- and proves the machine would still boot. What it cannot do is drive the screen, the MCUs, the toolchanger or a print. This is the on-hardware procedure.

There is one flash: the firmware package for your model.

Rule: have the stock FlashForge package for your model on a spare stick before you flash anything. Flashing it back is the uninstall, and it is the only recovery step that needs nothing but a USB port — no ssh, no screen. It is proven by make test-recovery, which installs the mod into the printer replica and then flashes the stock package over it.

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Step zero: check the model gate

Every package carries a gate. Its runFirmwareExe.sh has MACHINE= / PID= baked in, and compares them against the values app_startup.sh passes from the firmware already on the printer. A mismatch is refused with "Firmware does not match machine type" — it will not install, and it is not a valid recovery image either.

Model	MACHINE	PID
Creator 5	Creator5	0028
Creator 5 Pro	Creator5Pro	0029

The gate is not cosmetic: the two models ship different firmwareExe binaries, so a package must be built from the stock package for its own model. make release builds both.

Find yours in Settings → About, or in /usr/data/firmwareRes/config/general.json (machineName), and set TARGET_MACHINE in config.env. Then:

make build && make verify          # one model
make release                       # both, into dist/

verify.sh fails loudly on a mismatch. You must start from a stock package built for your own model — the mod inherits the gate from whatever package you unpack.

Before the first flash

• Put a copy of the stock FlashForge package for your model on a spare USB stick and keep it physically separate. That is your recovery image: flashing it restores every file the mod touches (proven by make test-recovery). Check it is the right model first — see above.
• Note your printer's serial number (Settings → About). The factory image restores a placeholder serial and you may need to put yours back.
• Confirm you can reach the printer's IP.
• make test passes.
• make rootfs && make test-install passes — this parses every script that will run on the printer using the printer's own busybox ash.

Two USB sticks, FAT32, both packages at the root of the stick (not in a folder). Ship both filenames (Creator5-* and Creator5Pro-*): the Pro's boot script globs Creator5Pro-*.tgz, the non-Pro globs Creator5-*.tgz.

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The flash (make build)

One flash brings up everything: a root password you know, Mainsail and moonraker, the forked Klipper with the toolchanger extras, and HelixScreen on the touchscreen in place of FlashForge's UI.

The root password. Every package — the official releases included — picks a random one on the printer during the first install, sets it, and writes it to anvil-password.txt on the USB stick you flashed from. Pull the stick after the flash and read it — then save the password somewhere safe and delete the file. If the stick is not writable no password is set at all, and the install log says so. Updates keep whatever root password the printer already has — including one you set yourself with passwd — so the stick gets a password exactly once. Only a package you build with ROOT_PW_HASH set carries one baked in instead.

To bake in your own, set it before you build:

make passwd      # prompts, prints the hash -- paste into ROOT_PW_HASH in config.env

It runs inside the pinned build image, so it is the same python producing the same SHA-512 crypt on every host. (A host's own openssl passwd -6 is not dependable for this: LibreSSL builds ship no -6 at all.)

ssh works because the stock rootfs already ships /usr/sbin/dropbear and an enabled /etc/init.d/S50dropbear — port 22 is already open on a stock printer, there is simply no published password. That shell is your recovery channel, so confirm it before you touch anything else.

Before flashing, re-read the warnings about Z offsets in docs/toolchange.md. A wrong offset drives the nozzle into the plate.

Understand the safety net first, because FlashForge's UI is gone from the screen and there is nothing to fall back to:

• ssh and Mainsail do not depend on the screen. /etc/init.d/S50dropbear is stock and runs long before the UI, and init.d/S60nginx and init.d/S62moonraker start the web stack independently of it — and of each other, so S62moonraker restart over ssh leaves Mainsail served. They are your way in when the screen is dark.
• init.d/S70klipper owns Klipper startup, because on stock firmware it was firmwareExe — not any init script — that ran /usr/prog/klipper/start.sh. Without this the printer would boot to a working screen and be unable to move.
• If the UI misbehaves, opkg remove anvil-helixscreen and reboot: the printer comes up headless — S80ui finds nothing to start. ssh and Mainsail are unaffected either way. There is no automatic latch; nothing stops the UI unless you do.

Go/no-go, in this order — with the emergency stop within reach:

Access first, so that everything below is diagnosable:

• ssh root@PRINTER gets you a shell (password from anvil-password.txt on the stick)
• http://PRINTER/ loads Mainsail
• Mainsail shows the printer as ready, not "Klipper reports: ERROR"

If Mainsail loads but Klipper errors, stop here and read /usr/data/logs/printer.log over ssh. Do not go on to motion.

Then the screen:

• HelixScreen appears on the touchscreen
• Klipper is still running — this is the one people miss
• heaters and motion respond from the touchscreen

Then motion, which is the part that can damage the machine:

• ssh root@PRINTER 'grep -i error /usr/data/logs/printer.log | tail' is clean
• TOOLCHANGE_STATUS responds in the Mainsail console
• home all axes — watch the first Z move
• one tool change, by hand, at temperature
• gcode/creator5-safe-moves.gcode — cold, 50 mm above the plate
• gcode/creator5-feature-test.gcode — the real thing, two tools

The two verification files

gcode/ holds them. They are hand-maintained G-code, not generated: send them to the printer the way you send any print — Mainsail's upload, or OrcaSlicer's Klipper/Moonraker target. Each one's own header repeats everything below, so whoever is standing at the machine has it in front of them.

First: creator5-safe-moves.gcode

The feature print with the heat and the filament taken out. Once homed, no move in it goes below Z50; nothing extrudes and no heater is given a target. It answers three questions — does the G28 wrapper home safely, docking a mounted tool first; does a tool change latch and release; do the fans, the chamber gate and END_PRINT do what they claim — and it answers them before a nozzle can reach the plate.

It names no tool as a bare Tn and carries no M104/M140, so ff_print derives nothing from it and the implicit prepare has nothing to heat or purge. That makes it safe whether FF_BEFORE_PRINT_START.prepare is 0 or 1.

Two refusals it may produce are the gates working, not faults: the calibration refusal from Mainsail's print entry point (override deliberately with SET_GCODE_VARIABLE MACRO=_FF_JOB VARIABLE=allow_uncalibrated VALUE=1), and "Refusing to home Z: cannot tell whether a tool is mounted", which means the dock switches disagree — run TOOLCHANGE_STATUS and find the one that is lying.

Then: creator5-feature-test.gcode

Not a model. One file that drives every macro the mod adds, in the order a real print drives them, and leaves something on the plate you can measure:

Phase	What it proves
start block	START_PRINT with TOOLS=: the preflight gate, then one purge + wipe per tool at the chute while the bed heats
0	TOOLCHANGE_STATUS / TOOL_OFFSET_STATUS dumped into printer.log alongside the print itself
1	nested squares, one ring per tool, 2 mm apart. Cold, the gap on left vs right is that tool's X offset error; front vs back its Y
2	a solid single first layer — squish is the verdict on TOOLCHANGE_SET_PRINT_OFFSET
3	the M106 P<n> fan map, one target at a time with a dwell
4	M141: a Pro heats, a plain Creator 5 says so and prints on. An abort here is a real failure
5	a tower with one tool change per layer, hot, mid-print
6	END_PRINT via the machine end block

Two things it deliberately does not do. It never calibrates — TOOL_CALIBRATE_TOOL_OFFSET and TOOL_LOCATE_SENSOR need the build plate off, which a print does not have, so the file only reads the geometry. And it contains no PAUSE: press Pause in Mainsail during the tower and then Resume, which is the one check that wants a human at the machine.

Unlike the safe file, this one needs the implicit prepare turned off — it is the deliberate exception, because it carries its own START_PRINT with the TOOLS= list the automatic path cannot derive. For this print only:

SET_GCODE_VARIABLE MACRO=FF_BEFORE_PRINT_START VARIABLE=prepare VALUE=0

and put it back afterwards, with VALUE=1 or simply a RESTART.

Preparing twice misplaces nothing, but it re-homes and re-purges every tool for no reason.

Do not persist the 0 by editing variable_prepare. Every ordinary file printed here relies on the automatic path: the stock Orca profile calls no START_PRINT and carries no G28, so with prepare off nothing homes or heats the bed and the profile's first move — G1 Z5 F2400 — runs on unhomed axes.

It is set up for T0 and T1 at 220 °C on a 60 °C bed. To exercise different tools, edit the TOOLS= list in START_PRINT and the T<n> lines in the body to match — make test-py will tell you if the two disagree, which is the one mistake that costs a print.

Keeping them honest

make test-py checks both files against the shipped macros and the configured axis limits: every command in them must be one the mod's Klipper config or pkgs/klipper/payload/klipper/klippy/extras/ defines (bar an explicit allowlist of Klipper built-ins, currently just SET_PRESSURE_ADVANCE), TOOLS= must list every tool the feature print uses, and the safe file's own lines must stay cold and above Z50 — the check reads the file, so it does not see what an implicit START_PRINT does before it. A renamed macro breaks the suite rather than the print.

The .cfg includes are wired up for you: printer.base.cfg ends with the seven [include ff-*.cfg] lines, so a flash brings the mod up by itself. Your printer.cfg is not touched. The factory dock and nozzle numbers are pulled in for you too: on the first boot after the flash, [ff_legacy] imports firmwareExe's per-unit JSON and persists it with its own SAVE_CONFIG, so Klipper restarts once, right after coming up — before the screen is on its feet. TOOL_OFFSET_STATUS afterwards should show a nozzle triple for every tool and no NOT CALIBRATED.

The included files are the mod's, and every update overwrites them without asking — ff-*.cfg and printer.base.cfg alike. Do not edit them. Put changes at the end of printer.cfg, restating only the option or macro you are changing: Klipper merges same-named sections and the last value wins, so everything you leave out keeps the shipped value and your overrides survive every flash. Each of those files opens with a header saying as much.

moonraker.conf is mod-owned too — it is overwritten on every update, which is how the [webcam] block and the API lockdown reach the printer. Its seam is moonraker-custom.conf beside it: created once, never written again, and included at the end of moonraker.conf, so anything you set there wins. Do not delete it — Moonraker treats an include that matches no file as fatal and will refuse to start. An empty one is fine.

If you edit moonraker.conf itself anyway, the installer notices and keeps your copy, landing the new version beside it as .mod-new.

A bad UI is not repairable on the printer. There is no fallback interface: FlashForge's binary is replaced and HelixScreen is the only thing that draws on the screen. ssh tells you why it is dark, but nothing you can set on the machine will make it light up again:

ssh root@PRINTER
/usr/data/anvil/init.d/S80ui status        # what did it choose, and why
# chose "none"  -> HelixScreen is not installed
# chose "helix" -> it was started and failed on its own; see its log

opkg remove anvil-helixscreen only stops it being started at all — useful to silence a UI that interferes with something else, not a repair. The actual fix is to flash a package again: the mod, if you have a corrected build, or the stock FlashForge package for your model to go back to FlashForge's own interface.

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If something goes wrong

Symptom	Do this
Printer boots, screen blank	ssh in; /usr/data/anvil/init.d/S80ui status says whether the UI was even started. No on-device repair — reflash the mod, or flash the stock package to get FlashForge's UI back. ssh, Mainsail and printing are unaffected
No ssh, no screen	flash the stock package for your model
Recovery stick does not help	try a newer stock FlashForge package for your model
Still broken	factory package (Creator5Pro-factory-*.tgz plus the separate Creator5Pro-factory.tar.xz on the same stick; needs 800 MB free)

The mod never creates a mount point named like a mod, specifically so that FlashForge's factory-restore package — which greps the mount table for a known community mod's name and refuses to run when it matches — remains usable as a last resort.

Logs worth reading, all on the data partition and all surviving a reboot:

/usr/data/anvil-install.log      what the installer did
/usr/data/logs/anvil-boot.log    services + UI choice at each boot
/usr/data/logs/printer.log     klipper
/usr/data/logs/helixscreen.log helixscreen