Saved setups and diagnostics

Keep your room map safe. For a device or desktop problem, start with Troubleshooting.

Configuration and diagnostics

Your setup lives at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ledalert/config.json, or ~/.config/ledalert/config.json when XDG_CONFIG_HOME is unset. Use --config /path/to/config.json to choose another location.

config.json stores room, routing and device settings—not runtime lighting permission or notification history.
config.json.ui.json stores guide progress, completed setup/strip placement, the last successfully connected saved target, and tooltip/demo visibility. It stores no lighting permission, guidance session, demo state or undo history. For a custom path, append .ui.json to the filename.
Saving uses a same-directory temporary file with mode 0600, file synchronization, atomic replacement and directory synchronization. Invalid settings cannot overwrite the saved file. A directory-sync error after replacement means persistence could not be confirmed.

From an extracted binary bundle:

./bin/ledalert --config /path/to/config.json check-config
./bin/ledalert --config /path/to/config.json probe
./bin/ledalert --help

check-config validates the file with no desktop or network access. probe is read-only but contacts the configured device; it sends no lighting output. For a source build, use ./target/release/ledalert, adjusted for CARGO_TARGET_DIR if set. If installed on PATH, use ledalert.

Validation limits

Setting	Limit
RGB LEDs	8,192
Displays	16
Strip vertices	2–64
Rules	128
Configuration file	256 KiB
Room width, depth and height	0.5–50 m
Custom outline	3–12 normalized counterclockwise corners; absent or empty means rectangle
Adjacent outline or strip vertices	At least 1 cm apart, allowing coordinate-rounding error

Outlines cannot cross themselves, overlap or contain holes. Whole strip segments must fit inside the footprint, not just their endpoints. See room outlines for editing behavior.

Back up and recover

Close LedAlert before copying or restoring files. Minimizing leaves it running.
Copy the configuration and optional .ui.json sibling to a separate backup location. Keep a known-good copy rather than overwriting it during recovery.
Run check-config against the file you want to use. If validation fails, preserve it and read the error before changing anything. Do not alter a version field to bypass validation.
To restore a backup, copy it to the intended configuration path while LedAlert is closed, then launch with that path. Review the room, allocation and rules with lighting disabled; hardware permission is always a separate action.

An unreadable setup remains untouched until you choose Begin new setup and save. That action replaces the file; it is not a diagnostic reset.

For a save failure, check destination access and the reported cause. A crash may leave a named .tmp sibling. Remove it only after keeping a backup and confirming no LedAlert instance is saving. Do not run two instances against the same setup or controller.