creator5-custom-firmware

Custom firmware for the FlashForge Creator 5 and Creator 5 Pro.

It installs the way a normal FlashForge update does: copy one file to a USB stick, plug it in, power the printer on. No jailbreak, no soldering, no opening the case, no ssh needed to get started — the printer's own updater does the work.

Unofficial and unaffiliated with FlashForge. It voids your warranty and you are responsible for your machine. Nothing here has been installed on a printer yet — see Status before you flash anything.

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What you get

Mainsail in your browser	The full Klipper web interface at http://<printer-ip>/ — upload gcode, watch the print, tune on the fly. Moonraker comes with it, so anything that speaks the Klipper API works.
A shell on your printer	ssh as root. Dropbear is already running on stock firmware; this simply gives you a password you know. Official releases have one baked in at build time; a package you build yourself without setting ROOT_PW_HASH picks a random password and writes it to anvil-password.txt on your USB stick.
Real toolchanger Klipper	A current Klipper with proper tool-change support, replacing the 0.12-era tree FlashForge ships.
A current Moonraker	Replacing the 2022 build FlashForge ships, which is too old for today's Mainsail — with it, the camera panel never appears at all.
A modern touchscreen UI	HelixScreen replaces the stock interface on the printer's own screen.
Nothing you cannot undo	Flashing the stock FlashForge package restores every file the mod replaced, and the printer behaves as it did before.

The stock boot process and the stock recovery path are left in place. The mod's whole integration point is one file — firmwareExe, the stock application — and nothing in rcS or app_startup.sh is patched, so FlashForge's own updater is still what installs and still what reverts. Flashing the stock package restores everything the mod replaced out of that package: firmwareExe, start.sh, the Klipper tree, printer.base.cfg and shadow. What it does not do is scrub the disk — the payload under /usr/data/anvil, the ff-*.cfg in /usr/data/config/ and the install log stay behind, inert, because nothing references them any more. make test-recovery asserts that, on a replica.

One thing does not come back: Moonraker. The mod replaces the printer's Moonraker with a newer build, and Moonraker is not in the update package at all — it ships only on the factory image — so a stock reflash has nothing to restore it from, and the mod's build stays. It works, and Mainsail is happy with it; it is simply not reversible the way everything else here is. Getting FlashForge's own Moonraker back means the factory image. Build with BUILD_MOONRAKER=0 if you would rather the mod never touched it (you keep the stock 2022 server, and Mainsail will show no camera).

What you give up

That one file is FlashForge's whole application, so anything that lived inside it rather than in a separate service goes with it:

• The FlashForge network API on :8898, and with it FlashPrint, Orca's FlashForge profile and the mobile app. Moonraker's API takes over, which is what Mainsail, OrcaSlicer's Klipper/Moonraker upload and Fluidd speak. Slice for the toolchanger and send it there instead.

The camera is not on that list, though the app did serve it: mjpg-streamer is already on the printer, unused, and this firmware simply starts it. The stream shows up in Mainsail as usual.

Flashing the stock package brings the API back.

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Which file do I need

Creator 5 and Creator 5 Pro are not interchangeable. Each package is built for one model and the printer refuses a package meant for the other, so pick the file whose name matches your machine:

Your printer	The file
Creator 5	Creator5-anvil-<date>.tgz
Creator 5 Pro	Creator5Pro-anvil-<date>.tgz

Not sure which you have? On the printer: Settings → About.

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How to flash

1. Format a USB stick as FAT32. Not exFAT, not NTFS.
2. Copy the file for your model to the root of the stick. Not in a folder. Leave the name exactly as it is — the printer looks for that pattern.
3. Power the printer off.
4. Plug the stick in and power the printer on. It finds the package by itself, shows the update screen and installs. This takes a few minutes.
5. Wait for it to reboot on its own, then pull the stick.

Afterwards, http://<printer-ip>/ gets you Mainsail. The install log is on the printer at /usr/data/anvil-install.log.

Two things to do first

One file per model, one flash — but do these before you start, because they are the cheap version of every problem people hit:

• Check the model. A Creator5Pro- package will not install on a Creator 5 and vice versa; the printer refuses it outright, which is annoying rather than dangerous, but it is the most common reason a flash "does nothing".
• Put the stock FlashForge package for your model on a second stick, and keep it separate. That stick is the undo button — see below.

The go/no-go checks — what to look at after the flash, in what order, and what means stop — are in docs/hardware-testing.md. Read it before the first flash.

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If something goes wrong

Keep a copy of the stock FlashForge package for your model on a spare USB stick before you start. That stick is the undo button: flashing it restores every file this firmware touches. It is a normal FlashForge update, so it installs the same way — stick in, power on.

A few things are deliberately built in so a bad flash cannot cost you the machine:

• A crashing UI cannot lock you out. The screen is not how you reach the printer: ssh and Mainsail come up from their own services, before and independently of the UI, so a dead screen costs you the screen and nothing else — you can still print. It is not repairable on the machine, though: HelixScreen is the only UI there is, and getting a working screen back means flashing a package again. MOD_UI=0 in /usr/data/anvil/anvil.conf stops it being started at all.
• ssh stays up even when the screen does not, so you can get in and look.
• Your printer.cfg is never overwritten — it is not a file this firmware ships, and it is where your changes belong. The configs the mod does ship (ff-*.cfg, printer.base.cfg) are overwritten on every update, so put overrides in printer.cfg after the includes rather than editing them: Klipper merges same-named sections and the last value of an option wins, so you restate only what you are changing. Each of those files says so in its own header. moonraker.conf works the same way, with moonraker-custom.conf as its seam: that file is created once, never overwritten, and included last, so your settings win. (Keep it — Moonraker refuses to start if the include matches nothing.)
• The kernel and the motion board are never touched by a normal package.

More detail, including what to do when the printer will not boot at all: docs/hardware-testing.md.

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Status

No package has been installed on a real printer yet. The build pipeline and the full test suite pass — including the end-to-end update test, where the package sits on a real FAT filesystem in a replica of the printer and the machine's own boot script finds it, installs it, and boots again with the mod running. That replica is the printer's real filesystem running its real binaries. It is still not a machine.

Have the stock package for your model on a spare stick before you begin.

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Documentation

docs/hardware-testing.md	The on-hardware procedure, with the checks that say go or stop
docs/how-it-works.md	How the mod hooks into the stock firmware, and what the stock firmware does that surprises people
docs/building.md	Building your own packages from a stock FlashForge one
docs/testing.md	The test suite, and how we know a package does not brick a printer
docs/printer-replica.md	The printer replica: what is authentic, what is not
docs/toolchange.md	The toolchanger mod: the ff_* Klipper extras, the ff-*.cfg configs, and the Z offsets to get right before you print
docs/notes/	Reverse-engineering notes on the stock firmware, behind the toolchanger work