Why the H.264 camera stream was removed (fixes the "black screen" freeze)
Several users hit a hard freeze on the KE — screen goes dark, SSH dies, only a power-cycle recovers it. We tracked this down to memory pressure, not a software crash.
The KE board has only 197 MB of RAM, and its swap is a file on the eMMC (not zram). The optional H.264 camera stream we shipped ran a go2rtc + ffmpeg transcode pipeline that used ~44 MB on top of Creality's own ~11 MB camera process. Under print load that pushed the box into swap-thrash on the eMMC, where it would lock up entirely.
This release removes the H.264 / go2rtc stream and reverts to the stock camera, which is the single biggest driver of the freeze. The lightweight image tuning (contrast/saturation via v4l2-ctl) stays — that costs no extra memory.
You do not need to do anything manually: on every install/upgrade, the installer now automatically migrates any existing go2rtc setup away — it stops the S96h264cam service, kills the go2rtc/ffmpeg processes, removes the init script and /usr/data/h264cam, and deletes the leftover "Nebula H264" webcam entry from Moonraker. Verified end-to-end on a live KE that had go2rtc installed: migration removed everything, the stock camera kept working, and ~32 MB of RAM was freed.
Changes
Removed
- H.264 / go2rtc camera stream (
k1_mods/h264cam) — the main cause of the dark-screen / dead-SSH freeze on the 197 MB KE (see above). Reverted to the stock camera.
Added
- Automatic migration on every install/upgrade that removes any existing go2rtc install (service, processes, init script, files, and the Moonraker webcam entry). Nothing to do by hand.
Fixed
- Manual Load/Unload not completing before auto-cooldown. Auto-cooldown was sending
M104 S0as soon as the command was queued, not when motion finished, so the heater dropped mid-retract and the filament jammed half-in/half-out. Cooldown now waits onM400(all extruder motion complete) before dropping the heater — applies to load, unload, extrude, and retract. - Stoppable Load rebuilt as a proper 2-phase feed: 80 mm fast approach (10 mm/s) + 50 mm slow purge (3 mm/s, matching the stock macro), still stoppable per chunk. Replaces the earlier flat 150 mm @ 5 mm/s feed.
Kept
- Creality Nebula camera image tuning (persistent contrast/saturation via
v4l2-ctl) — lightweight, no extra memory cost.
Upgrade: re-run the installer as usual; the go2rtc migration runs automatically. See the wiki Upgrading page for details.