Question around config.json and config.g and the configurator

magnets99

Hi All,
I'm new to this but i did do some reading on the forums. as i understand it:

config.json is generated by the config-tool along with config.g and other files.
the duet2 wifi board (and the others i assume) ignore the config.json and only read the config.g
The config-tool ignores the config.g file and only reads the config.json when editing.

if the above is correct my issue is:

I have a seocnd hand printer, with a very old firmware (2.03).
The SD card it came with has both a config.json and a config.g file.
I upgraded the firmware to 3.5.4 (eventually) and used the config-tool to upgrade the config.g file by reading in the existing config.json from the sd card.
all hell broke loose, homing was borked, the motors drove the wrong way, the temperature probes read -2500 all sorts of issues.
When i looked, it appears the config.g created by config-tool is very different from the original config.g
I expected some differences as a lot of the codes have been changed or deprecated from 2.03 to 3.4 but some stuff like motor direction or endstop location was wrong.

Is it likely that the previous owner tweaked the config.g file manually after generation by config-tool?

If so, is this expected? given that the confi.g tool is human readable and easy to edit but the json file isn't?

Is their a utility to convert or analyse and existing config.g file for use by the config-tool I does one have to go through it manually?

I'm currently manually going through the original config.g and trying to ge tthe configurator to output very similar gcode but this is time consuming and very prone to errors as i don't know what i'm doing and i'm having to read an awful lot of changelog to capture why some code looks different.

jay_s_uk

@magnets99 whatever is generated by the config tool is a guide and it is definitely expected that config.g is changed once the printer has gone through commissioning.
You're much better generating a config with the tool and then comparing it against the config from the old firmware version
There's no tool available to convert a current config.g to a config.json

magnets99

@jay_s_uk

OK thanks, so the config tool is primarily aimed at the initial generation rather than tweaking?

jay_s_uk

@magnets99 correct. Think of it as enough to get you going with most commands in place, but you have no idea whether motors are turning the correct way etc until you start to commission. The rest of the changes are then made at the machine in config.g