system76-kbd-led

A simple keyboard LED controller for System76 laptops supported by systemd services for color and brightness restoration on boot.

Associated Links

DISCLAMIER: This is not a System76 development; it is a personal project of my own and for no reason should you contact System76 about this program for support or anything like that. It was created because I could not find a software tool for it provided by Pop, though one most likely exists somewhere, and I wanted a simple tool to control all of it via software. I'd love to get this merged into the Pop OS repositories if it's at all useful to them!

Usage

system76-kbd-led controls the following sysfs nodes under the base System76 Keyboard LED prefix (/sys/class/leds/system76::kbd_backlight): brightness, color_left, color_center, color_right, color_extra.

usage: system76-kbd-led [-h,--help] [-v,--verbose] [-t,--toggle] [-x,--restore] [-l,--left <arg>] [-c,--center <arg>] [-r,--right <arg>] [-e,--extra <arg>] [-b,--brightness <arg>] [-i,--increment <arg>]

Program options:
  -h [ --help ]           Display the help message.
  -v [ --verbose ]        Enable debug logging.
  -t [ --toggle ]         Toggle keyboard.
  -x [ --restore ]        Restore colors and brightness.
  -l [ --left ] arg       Left color (rgb).
  -c [ --center ] arg     Center color (rgb).
  -r [ --right ] arg      Right color (rgb).
  -e [ --extra ] arg      Extra color (rgb).
  -b [ --brightness ] arg Brightness overriding value.
  -i [ --increment ] arg  Brightness increment (-/+).

Note: The -t option uses a software cache, located at /var/cache/system76-kbd-led/brightness, which is initially populated with /sys/class/leds/system76::kbd_backlight/brightness_hw_changed.

Building

Build Dependencies

Debian/Ubuntu

Package	Version
g++-10	>= 10.1
libstdc++-10-dev	>= 10.1
libboost-program-options-dev	>= 1.65
cmake	>= 2.8.8
git	any

$ sudo apt-get install g++-10 libstdc++-10-dev libboost-program-options-dev cmake git

Arch Linux

Package	Version
g++	>= 10.1
libstdc++	>= 10.1
boost	>= 1.65
boost-libs	>= 1.65
cmake	>= 2.8.8
git	any

$ sudo pacman -S g++ libstdc++ boost boost-libs cmake git

After the deps for your system are installed, you can proceed to the compilation step below.

Compilation

To build system76-kbd-led, proceed with the following process:

$ mkdir build && cd build
$ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=DEBUG ..
$ make

Run the program.

$ ./src/system76-kbd-led -h

Installation

Installation is straight forward; we recommend using CPack to generate a package for your distribution.

Debian

Generate a .deb package after building the project.

# (Required to produce the correct version for CPack's .deb)
$ git pull origin --tags # Fetch all tags from the repository.

# Build the application for production.
$ mkdir build && cd build
$ cd build
$ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE ..
$ make

# Generate system76-kbd-led-<major>.<minor>.<patch>-Linux.deb.
$ cpack -G DEB

Install it on a Debian-based operating system.

# Install the .deb package.
$ sudo dpkg -i system76-kbd-led-*-Linux.deb

Enable systemd services for color and brightness management on boot and shutdown.

# Restores the cache when started (normally, at boot).
$ sudo systemctl enable system76-kbd-led.service

# Runs the program on shutdown to cache the current levels (at shutdown).
$ sudo systemctl enable system76-kbd-led-cache.service

Authors

• Kevin Morris <kevr.gtalk@gmail.com>

License

This application is developed under the MIT public license, verbosely located at ./LICENSE.