Help: how to set static keyboard color via WMI/CIM

[TheBestPessimist]

Hello,
From your support here and looking at the code, i see that there should be a way to set the keyboard backlight color to my desired RGB.

Something like

(Get-WmiObject -Namespace Root/WMI -Class AsusAtkWmi_WMNB).DEVS(0x001234567, MODE_STATIC, R, G, B)

Afaiu, there are multiple devices to whom i need to send the correct command?
Would you please be so kind and tell me how that works?

Rationale:

I have some issues where the quick keyboard light change breaks me out of flow (for example when working). Even the slow mode of rainbow is extremely fast for me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have already implemented a suuuuper slow rainbow using aura creator (it took a while, 😅) here. It lasts 10 min as that's the maximum length of a light in aura. The problem is that Armoury Crate is stupid and when i turn on my laptop it does not autodetect my keyboard/aura creator, so i need to manually go and enable it in armoury crate. Every. Single. Time. 🙄

As you can imagine that's annoying. So instead, i would like to implement a script (maybe using Autohotkey as i'm using that for so much automation already).
And the first step is to understand how exactly to set a color from the CLI.
Then i could play around with the time each color is displayed, so that i'm happy with how long the "transitions" take.

If you need more info, my laptop is Asus ROG Flow X16 GV601VI 2023 RTX 4070.

Thank you in advance.

[seerge]

@TheBestPessimist keyboard is controlled via USB, not via WMI

g-helper/app/Aura.cs

Line 175 in 07020c3

public static byte[] AuraMessage(int mode, Color color, Color color2, int speed)

Rainbow / any other animation effect has a speed setting (that you can control via app too, under Keyboard -> Extra)

[TheBestPessimist]

i dont want to use an animation from Asus though, i want to set static colors myself.
basically this pseudocode in a loop:

• set color 255 0 0
• sleep 10
• set color 255 10 0
• sleep 10
• set color 255 20 0
• sleep 10
• set color 255 30 0
  etc.

keyboard is controlled via USB, not via WMI

that will make things more difficult.

[TheBestPessimist]

Is there a difference between Static and Aura Sync Static? As far as i can see, they have different colors set.

[seerge]

@TheBestPessimist i think they are same? Aura sync - is "software" controlled animations (i.e. armoury runs in background and constantly sets new colors to keyboard imitating animations), while basic effects are hardcoded into keyboard itself.

G-helper deliberatedly controls only basic effects.

[seerge]

Migrated this to discussions as this is not an issue with the app :)

[TheBestPessimist]

Hey, i managed to do something which works for my keyboard: https://github.com/TheBestPessimist/Asus-Keyboard-Super-Slow-Rainbow
It's not slow yet, but it's changing my keyboard's colors, so it's a start.
I'm very unfamiliar with C#/.NET etiquette (i'm a kotlin dev) so i probably broke all the style rules.

I'd like to get more of your knowledge though:

When i'm enumerating only my device ID, i still get a list of devices, and out of those only 1 is actually the correct one, even though they all have the same vendor and product.

HidDevices.Enumerate(0x0b05, 0x19b6)

Is there a way to detect which is the correct device? I find it wasteful to try to set the colors for all the devices which have nothing to do with my keyboard.
What if i want to add support for another keyboard?

[seerge]

@TheBestPessimist it could be more than one device on some laptops (like on Z13 it seems like keyboard / logo backlight are separate, but behave in same way). So to be safe i just send payload to all matching devices

[TheBestPessimist]

I see. Well, in any case, i added a cache/check for which devices respond to aura commands. That happens on startup, so it should be ok

[TheBestPessimist]

Thanks very much for your support. I implemented this!

[TheBestPessimist]

@seerge i have one more question: how/where do you detect if the screen is off?

Right now i have the problem that the screen never turns off (ie from idle time) because of sending light commands to keyboard.

linked issue for future me: TheBestPessimist/Flow.Launcher.Plugin.Asus-Keyboard-Super-Slow-Rainbow#1

[seerge]

Listen to monitor power events https://github.com/seerge/g-helper/blob/f395c706f6a794be9af17fbaec764caa8ff5f7fe/app/Program.cs#LL93C16-L93C16 (but better check stackoverflow)

[TheBestPessimist]

Thanks for your suggestion but now i realised that won't work either. The problem seems to be that every time i send a message to the keyboard, the "idle counter" resets to 0, so my laptop will never enter idle.

back to the drawing board :-(

[iamtimsson]

@TheBestPessimist have you tried OpenRGB?

Using the extended animation plugin, I wrote a layers animation to look like cindering kindling to emulate how this hot mess is burning itself to baser elements.

{
    "AllowOnlyFirst": false,
    "Brightness": 100,
    "CustomSettings": {
        "groups": [
            {
                "composer_fn": 9,
                "layers": [
                    {
                        "composer_fn": 9,
                        "effect_settings": {
                            "AllowOnlyFirst": false,
                            "Brightness": 50,
                            "CustomName": "",
                            "CustomSettings": {
                                "h": 1.0,
                                "invert_colors": false,
                                "w": 1.0,
                                "x": 0.0,
                                "y": 0.0
                            },
                            "EffectClassName": "Mask",
                            "FPS": 60,
                            "RandomColors": false,
                            "Slider2Val": 1,
                            "Speed": 1,
                            "Temperature": 0,
                            "Tint": 0,
                            "UserColors": [
                                255,
                                255
                            ]
                        }
                    },
                    {
                        "composer_fn": 6,
                        "effect_settings": {
                            "AllowOnlyFirst": false,
                            "Brightness": 100,
                            "CustomName": "",
                            "EffectClassName": "Mosaic",
                            "FPS": 60,
                            "RandomColors": false,
                            "Slider2Val": 147,
                            "Speed": 4,
                            "Temperature": 0,
                            "Tint": 0,
                            "UserColors": [
                                4351,
                                8447
                            ]
                        }
                    },
                    {
                        "composer_fn": 6,
                        "effect_settings": {
                            "AllowOnlyFirst": false,
                            "Brightness": 80,
                            "CustomName": "",
                            "CustomSettings": {
                                "lightning_mode": 1
                            },
                            "EffectClassName": "Lightning",
                            "FPS": 60,
                            "RandomColors": false,
                            "Slider2Val": 2,
                            "Speed": 69,
                            "Temperature": 0,
                            "Tint": 0,
                            "UserColors": [
                                12543
                            ]
                        }
                    }
                ]
            }
        ]
    },
    "EffectClassName": "Layers",
    "FPS": 60,
    "RandomColors": false,
    "Slider2Val": 1,
    "Speed": 1,
    "Temperature": 0,
    "Tint": 0
}

I call it burninator
it has a base layer of red, good old #ff0000 with a medium speed mosaic of redorange topped by a lightningflash of yellow, all in decreasing appearance, random across all lighting zones.
OpenRGB even set the leds on my redragon mouse came in a keyboard bundle LOL

[TheBestPessimist]

I tried OpenRGB but i could not make it work with my laptop (Asus ROG Flow X16 2023)