Feature Request - using RGB for visual alerting

[dagbdagb]

I am not a gamer. Nor am I very much into the RGB craze. Sorry. :-/
But I do like the thought of being able to use the keyboard or logo LED for alerting purposes.

Like a pulsing red 'M' when I have new email from a particular sender. Or a pulsing green 'D' for a discord notification. Not useful when I am sitting on the laptop, but handy when I watch TV and can just glance at the laptop (with sleeping display) to see if anything is happening.

How to get the alert out of the various apps/webpages/etc is not really the concern of this driver/utility. But if this is in place, a simple utility to fire the relevant commands to the razer controller is needed. I have been thinking how I would like this to work, as an 'end-user'.

Some sort of configfile with predefined ...stuff could allow for firing a CLI utility to say which pattern to fire and how many times. For example:

 dagb@home ~ $ ./bin/razeralert.py --help
 usage: razeralert.py [-h] [-d] [-l loops] pattern
 
 positional arguments:
   pattern     pattern to start

optional arguments:
  -h, --help   show this help message and exit
  -d, --debug  show debug output
  -l, --loops  number of loops, 0 (default) means forever


 dagb@home ~  $ ./bin/razeralert.py  mailalert

would read the configfile below and make the 'm' key pulse forever with a 3 second period.

[colors]
red = 0xff0000
green = 0x00ff00
blue = 0x0000ff

[steps]  # series of brightness values (0-255), timestep fixed at 20ms?
steps1 = 0,17,34,54,x,y,z.....
steps2 = sinus(3, 1, 128)   # predefined function, generate series given (period, multiplier, offset)
steps3 = triangle(period, multiplier, offset)   # predefined function, generate series given parameters

[sequence]  # combination of (color, steps) or series of (color, steps[n])
sequence1 = (red,steps1)
sequence1 = (red,steps[0]), (green,steps[1]), (blue,steps[2]), (red,steps[3]), (green,steps[4]),(blue,steps[5]),  ..
bluepulse = (blue, steps2)

[keysets]  # define keycombos for simplified pattern creation
keyset1 = 'a','b','c'
keyset2 = 'a','s','d','f'

[patterns]   # (combination of) ([key|keyset]/sequence/time offset)
pattern1 = (keyset1, sequence2), ('ctrl_l', sequence1, n)
mailalert = ('m', bluepulse)

Pretty sure the configfile can be repurposed for other things. :-)

[rnd-ash]

I love this idea! When i have IPC (Inter-process communication) working, I think this will be fairly easy to do.

[dagbdagb]

Quite a few bits missing from above. Like:

• when should the pattern be stopped? On any key? On a specific key? Only when a new pattern is set? User configurable?
• what should we return to? a default set in the config file? The previous pattern? Do we need to maintain a stack of patterns, for pushing and popping?
• should we allow for a logical AND of patterns? Should that be the default? Userconfigurable? Settable with the utility?

More ideas:

• should we have classes of patterns? With priorities? Or priority set by the utility? Does it make sense to inherit the concept of loglevel/facility from syslog?
• what is the best way to interface this to syslog?
• can I have a key flashing a few times when a network interface changes state?
• can we catch stuff from the kernel log?
• what does it take to catch notifications in the browser (the little number on the discord tab for example) and fire a razeralert?

[dagbdagb]

• start any job with a wrapper which fires an alert when the job finishes. Green if $? is 0, some other color for other values?