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Back up and restore a device

Every setting a device holds, saved to one file on your computer, and put back on the same device or a different one.

Worth doing before a firmware update, before rewiring, and once a rig you care about is working the way you want.

Take a backup

Open the File Manager panel and press Backup (⤓).

The browser downloads one .json bundle named for the device and the date. It walks the whole filesystem, so it holds the configuration of every module, your saved presets, and your MoonLive scripts.

Keep the file private. It contains the WiFi password.

Every file is byte-verified against the directory listing as it is read, with three outcomes. A file shorter than listed aborts the backup, because silent truncation is worse than no backup at all. A file longer than listed is binary rather than text, so it is skipped and named. A file that cannot be read is skipped and named too.

One thing is left out on purpose: /.hls, the streaming encoder's scratch output, which is rewritten every second and would fill the report with skipped binaries.

Put it back

Press Restore (⟲), choose the bundle, and confirm twice. The second press is deliberate: restoring overwrites the device's files.

Then read the report. It lists what needed an eye:

  • Renamed and mapped: a file, module type or control that changed name since the backup was taken, and what it became.
  • Values to review: something the mapping could not decide on its own, usually because it depends on the chip or the wiring.
  • No longer present: a module type or control this firmware does not have.

Most of a restore applies live, module by module, as each file lands. Two things do not, and the dialog names both:

  • Network settings apply at boot, because bringing an interface up is not a re-runnable operation. The dialog offers the restart, after which the device joins the network the backup names. Its file is written last for that reason: joining another network mid-restore would cut off the writes still to come.
  • The web server's port, which binds at boot.

Why the browser does the work

The device never runs migration code. Its loader is robust by design: an absent key keeps the control's default, a stale value clamps to the new bounds, and an unknown key is ignored.

So the rename maps live in the browser, in migrate.js, and apply to the bundle before it is uploaded. Each firmware release embeds the map as of that release, which is what lets any older backup restore correctly onto it with no version stamps anywhere.

The breaks a map cannot express are written down instead, in MIGRATING.

Restoring onto a blank device

A backup restores onto a freshly erased device, which is what makes an erase safe to do.

Join the device's MM-XXXX access point, open http://4.3.2.1, restore there, and take the offered restart. The bundle carries the WiFi credentials, so the device comes back on your network by itself.

From firmware older than the Backup button

The installer page offers the same backup as a bookmarklet, so a device too old to have the button can still be captured before you update it.

Moving a setup to another device

A restore is how you clone a rig. Take a backup from the working device, restore onto the new one, and read the report.

One thing to check afterwards: anything that names a pin. The configuration carries the pins the old board used, and if the new device is wired differently, the lights will be wrong in a way that looks like a broken effect. The device name comes across too, so give the clone its own.