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Creality K2 Series Install

This content is for 1.1 (beta). Switch to the stable release docs.

End-to-end guide for the Creality K2, K2 Plus, and K2 Pro: install, update, and uninstall. HelixScreen runs on the stock firmware, in place of the stock screen UI.

Tested state: works with stock firmware and stock Moonraker (no custom firmware required). Root access is enabled from the printer’s own settings menu.

Prerequisites

Section titled “Prerequisites”

  • Hardware:

    • Creality K2, K2 Plus, or K2 Pro
    • Stock 4.3” touchscreen display (480x800)
    • Network connection

  • Software:

    • Stock firmware with root access enabled (Settings > “Root account information”)
    • SSH access (root@<printer-ip>, password: creality_2024)
    • Moonraker is included in stock firmware; the wizard’s default port (7125) needs no changes (Creality’s own web front also reaches Moonraker through a proxy on 4408)

Install

Section titled “Install”

SSH into the printer and run:

Terminal window
python3 -c "import urllib.request as u;u.urlretrieve('https://releases.helixscreen.org/install.sh','/tmp/install.sh')" && sh /tmp/install.sh

Why not wget? Recent K2 firmware (Tina/OpenWrt) ships neither wget nor curl on the PATH: even the BusyBox wget applet has been compiled out. Every K2 includes python3 (Klipper and Moonraker need it) with working SSL, so the command above uses Python to fetch the installer over HTTPS; the installer then uses Python for the rest of the download and extraction. If your firmware still has wget (older builds did), wget -O - http://dl.helixscreen.org/install.sh | sh also works.

After installation, the setup wizard runs on the touchscreen. Moonraker is already on the printer, so the wizard’s connection step needs no changes.

What the Installer Does Here

Section titled “What the Installer Does Here”
  • Installs to /mnt/UDISK/helixscreen/ (the large user partition), with a boot service at /etc/init.d/S99helixscreen. An install at the older /opt/helixscreen location moves there on the next install or update, in-app updates included. Only your settings (settings.json, or an older helixconfig.json) and helixscreen.env are carried over; anything else you added under the old config/ directory, such as custom images or user themes, is not, and the old tree is deleted once the new install has a runnable binary and its settings, so copy those files out first. Setting INSTALL_DIR=/opt/helixscreen does not keep the old location
  • Stops and persistently disables the stock Creality UI service (/etc/init.d/app), then brings Creality’s web-server back up every time HelixScreen starts, so the printer’s stock local-network status connection (port 9999) keeps answering. The Creality Cloud app and its camera stream do not work while HelixScreen is installed. HelixScreen also takes the chamber camera over for its own stream, unless Moonraker already lists a working MJPEG camera that HelixScreen did not set up, or the release is missing its camera streamer
  • Keeps the download staging, caches, and logs on /mnt/UDISK as well; the small system overlay beneath /opt cannot hold a release archive
  • Waits up to two minutes for Moonraker during boot, then starts the UI anyway; it reconnects on its own

Service Control and Logs

Section titled “Service Control and Logs”
Terminal window
/etc/init.d/S99helixscreen start|stop|restart|status

Two log streams; collect both when reporting an issue:

Terminal window
# Structured app log (on the UDISK data partition, rotated):
tail -100 /mnt/UDISK/helixscreen-state/logs/helix.log
# Launcher / crash capture (lives beside the install; on builds whose
# /var/log is persistent it lands at /var/log/helixscreen/launcher.log):
tail -100 /mnt/UDISK/helixscreen/logs/launcher.log
# Anything that reached the OpenWrt syslog:
logread | grep helix-screen | tail -100

Updating

Section titled “Updating”

Use the bundled installer (no need to download it again):

Terminal window
/mnt/UDISK/helixscreen/install.sh --update

To pin a specific version, add --version vX.Y.Z (find the latest on the releases page). Your settings are preserved; see UPGRADING.md for what --update keeps and what --clean resets.

Check the current version over SSH:

Terminal window
/mnt/UDISK/helixscreen/bin/helix-screen --version

Uninstalling

Section titled “Uninstalling”
Terminal window
cp /mnt/UDISK/helixscreen/install.sh /tmp/install.sh && sh /tmp/install.sh --uninstall

This removes HelixScreen, re-enables and starts the stock Creality UI service (/etc/init.d/app), and hands the chamber camera back to the stock camera app, which also restores Creality’s stock AI failure detection (see the note below).

Quirks and Notes

Section titled “Quirks and Notes”

What’s different from the K1:

  • ARM processor (Allwinner, not MIPS): standard cross-compilation
  • Stock Moonraker: no community firmware required
  • OpenWrt-based init system (procd, not SysV)
  • CFS (Creality Filament System) support for RS-485 filament management

Stock AI failure detection is disabled while HelixScreen is installed. The stock detector rides the same service as the stock UI and watches the chamber camera, and HelixScreen takes over both. HelixScreen does not yet ship a replacement detector; one is tracked in issue #1033. Uninstalling restores the stock detector.

The portrait panel is software-rotated to landscape. That is the supported configuration; running it un-rotated with the portrait layout is alpha and mostly untested. On this lower-power CPU, animations and 3D bed-mesh rendering may be throttled.

See Also

Section titled “See Also”