dmgolembiowski/alienfx

Control AlienFX lighting on Alienware Aurora computers running Linux

alienfx

Control AlienFX lighting on Alienware Aurora computers running Linux

CAVEAT

This code is essentially a quick hack, with numerous stylistic inconsistances and other issues. The "#define"s are legacy code - the command IDs could certainly be an enum, etc. Variable names are also inconsistent in places, the Command function could be split up, more chipset commands could be implemented; the list goes on. My objective was solely to get uptime(1) to be reflected in my case colors, which limited the project's thoroughness. Despite this, I hope someone else will find it useful.

INTRO

This software, alienfx(1) and alienfx-uptime(1), are utilities for controlling the AlienWare AlienFX LED case lighting system as seen on the Aurora line, generally sold by Dell, from the linux command line. Support status:

Aurora (non-ALX): works Aurora ALX: some testing Area51: untested Allpowerfull: untested (and I'm skeptical of the the spelling)

I don't have the lighting info for any but the Aurora non-ALX version tested. I especially don't know any details about the Aurora ALX AlienFX chipset. Code diffs to update them the lighting descriptions are appreciated. If you email me anything about this software, please prefix "alienfx:" to the subject line.

It is not from, nor supported by, AlienWare in any way. AlienWare doesn't even provide protocol documentation, so be aware that everything done here has been constructed via reverse engineering or guesswork.

The AlienFX subsystem appears to the host computer as a USB-connected device, and takes simple commands, a subset of which are implement by this program. Instructions are also provided here for setting up the device with appropriate permissions and a pathname under Ubuntu Linux.

COMPILATION

This alienfx program relies on a number of packages, of which only the libusb package generally ends up being tricky to install. The key line from the source to be aware of is:

#include <libusb-1.0/libusb.h>

which refers to the default layout of the following Ubuntu/Debian packages:

libusb-1.0-0 2:1.0.1-1 userspace USB programming library libusb-1.0-0-dev 2:1.0.1-1 userspace USB programming library development

So, on Ubuntu, the following should install the specific version needed:

apt-get install libusb-1.0-0-dev

To begin setup for compilation:

./configure

Optionally, specify the target directory area with --prefix=/usr/local or whatever is desired.

FINDING THE DEVICE

As root:

lsusb -v

...should return a chunk containing text resembling that below. Note particularly the idVender 0x187c which is AlienWare, and the idProduct 0x0513 GS Desktop which identifies the Aurora version of the AlienFX lighting.

Bus 007 Device 002: ID 187c:0513  
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               1.10
  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0 
  bDeviceProtocol         0 
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x187c 
  idProduct          0x0513 
  bcdDevice            0.00
  iManufacturer           1 Alienware
  iProduct                2 G2 Desktop
  iSerial                 3 1.1.32
  bNumConfigurations      1
  Configuration Descriptor:
    bLength                 9
    bDescriptorType         2
    wTotalLength           41
    bNumInterfaces          1
    bConfigurationValue     1
    iConfiguration          0 
    bmAttributes         0x80
      (Bus Powered)
    MaxPower               64mA
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        0
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           1
      bInterfaceClass         3 Human Interface Device
      bInterfaceSubClass      0 No Subclass
      bInterfaceProtocol      0 None
      iInterface              0 
        HID Device Descriptor:
          bLength                 9
          bDescriptorType        33
          bcdHID               1.01
          bCountryCode            0 Not supported
          bNumDescriptors         1
          bDescriptorType        34 Report
          wDescriptorLength      54
         Report Descriptors: 
           ** UNAVAILABLE **
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x81  EP 1 IN
        bmAttributes            3
          Transfer Type            Interrupt
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x000a  1x 10 bytes
        bInterval              10
Device Status:     0x0000
  (Bus Powered)

The idVendor and idProduct are used in the next step of the process.

INSTALLATION

In Linux with UDEV, you might want to allow users to access the AlienFX device by adding a file /etc/udev/rules.d/alienfx.rules with:

ATTR{idVendor}=="187c", ATTR{idProduct}=="0513", MODE="0660", GROUP="adm", SYMLINK+="alienfx"

The above example allows access to the Aurora AlienFX for anyone in group "adm", and provides an extra symlink in /dev/alienfx (which this package doesn't use). Modify the ids as needed for different AlienFX hardware. OWNER can be used too, but a system group makes sense if the LEDs are going to be active even without a user logged in.

For testing, you can dig up the devpath with:

udevadm trigger  --verbose --dry-run --attr-match=idVendor=187c

(I'd actually used --attr-match=idProduct=0513 instead of the idVendor)

And then exercise the new file's content by sticking the result in place of the $devpath in the following command,

udevadm test $devpath

Or if you're just lazy, copy and paste this combo:

udevadm test `udevadm trigger --verbose --dry-run --attr-match=idVendor=187c`

If it works, you'll see correct permissions and ownership on whatever your system has instead of /dev/bus/usb/007/002 (or whatever), and can see the actual path by looking at the /dev/alienfx symbolic link. Or, briefly:

$ ls -lL /dev/alienfx crw-rw---- 1 root adm 189, 769 2010-11-01 17:33 /dev/alienfx

This code only implements direct access, rather than a sweet little daemon or something to field multiple connected clients or something.

It's horribly annoying that changing the color incurs something like a two-second delay. This kind of hardware choice makes it impossible to do smooth/fast crossfades, interesting flickers, and so on in a truly dynamic way. Sad. There's some question ask to whether 256 levels of r, g, and b are actually supported or just quantized to every 16 or so. There's no documentation online for the protocol either, so it's difficult to determin whether the apparent misfeatures are actually hardware limitations.

USE

The alienfx-uptime effect is quite nice. :-)

Good luck!

NOTES ABOUT THE PACKAGING

The following files were actually pulled in from a larger build system:

• GNUmakecore.in
• config.h.in
• configure
• configure.ac

There are included in the repository in the hopes they'll make it easy to build alienfx without too much effort, but replacing the GNUmakefile outright with a simpler approach would also work.

The normal product of "make dist" is generally available at the URL below, and includes updating files from the surrounding build system:

https://www.talisman.org/~erlkonig/software/pub/alienfx.tar.gz

THANKS

Some of the materials leading to this project were drawn from

• Benjamin Thaut - http://3d.benjamin-thaut.de/
• The AlienFXLite project
• Stefan Saraev - who threw my code on github before I did, added m11x, and noted a timing issue.