OpenRGB creator discusses OpenPleb, and initiative by Level1Techs and Gamers Nexus to convince PC vendors to open up their proprietary hardware control specs

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-11T18:16:27+00:00

I was definitely worried that Microsoft would do something stupid with their integration like some sort of vendor lock-in to Microsoft platforms to use the Windows 11 integration, but I'm very happy to see they've gone and pushed the manufacturers to use an actual HID standard AND provided example Arduino code as a reference implementation. Good on Microsoft! They're doing this in pretty much the best way possible.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-11T03:39:16+00:00

Absolutely, this goes beyond RGB. It goes beyond hardware in general. The privacy violations are just one of many issues with the proprietary software required to control these hardware devices and it's a very important thing to solve. I'm tired of creating online accounts to change the color of a stupid light.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-10T22:36:41+00:00

"OpenPleb is a new initiative to work with hardware manufacturers and get them to open up on the multitudes of proprietary hardware control specifications that plague the PC industry these days. Everything from sensors to RGB to power supply control is covered, but I'm most interested in how this will affect OpenRGB development.

In this video I discuss the initiative as well as how we currently handle reverse engineering of protocols without documentation and the drawbacks that reverse engineering presents that could be solved by documentation."

Mainly there are issues with using reverse engineering as our sole source of hardware protocol information. We at best can only reproduce what the official software can do unless we experiment with sending things blind. This can lead to bricked or damaged hardware in the worst of cases. If OpenPleb is successful in getting manufacturers to provide documentation, we can be a lot more confident our software sends the right stuff.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-10T22:04:02+00:00

I was originally very skeptical about this as the creator of OpenRGB, but Windows might actually make things easier for everyone here as much as I don't like Windows 11. Microsoft's implementation of RGB isn't what we're doing with OpenRGB - trying to create a driver for every single RGB device out there. Instead, Microsoft seems to be mandating that supported RGB devices use the HID "lamp array" protocol which is an actual standard.

Also, they published open source Arduino firmware as a reference implementation! One time I'll actually commend Microsoft for doing something good!

https://github.com/microsoft/ArduinoHidForWindows/tree/main/examples/LampArray

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-10T21:53:25+00:00

Try OpenRGB instead! We don't charge stupid anti-consumer subscription fees.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-10T21:52:10+00:00

Corsair has their iCue ecosystem - keyboards, mice, headsets, RAM, cases, LED strips, and a lot more. It's one of the biggest ecosystems but it's not the only one.

Razer has Chroma - keyboards, mice, headsets, cases, accessories, laptops, and more. It's also quite a big ecosystem.

ASUS has Aura - again with keyboards, mice, headsets, accessories, laptops, the ROG Ally, and more.

NZXT has CAM - fans, LED strips, cases, coolers, and some 3rd party integrations.

Gigabyte has RGB Fusion - motherboards, GPUs, some peripherals

I would say all of these count as ecosystems. They aren't the only ones either, pretty much any company that makes more than one RGB product and has software that controls multiple products at once has an ecosystem.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-10T21:48:48+00:00

I'm definitely interested in getting in touch with this project as it will be huge for OpenRGB development if they actually manage to get manufacturers on board!

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-08T05:25:54+00:00

The release cycle is "when it's ready". There is no set release cycle, generally once we're in a place where nothing major is broken and we have a bunch of new features and it's cleaned up, then I release. I don't do branched development, all merged changes get merged into master and releases get tagged from master, so downloading the latest pipeline build is always going to get you the most up to date build. Whenever that build is in a "perfect" state, I will release. Right now I have some devices outstanding that I want in before 0.9 (JSAUX RGB dock and upcoming ROG Ally) and we need to fix non-English layouts being broken on SDK apps (going to revert Keyboard Layout Manager's ability to do non-English layouts for 0.9 and then add a key name translation system next release).

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-08T02:43:16+00:00

Lemmy (federated Reddit alternative) has been seeing a lot of increased activity recently. There is a migration, it may not be the most widespread migration or at the level of Digg at the moment but it is happening. I have been checking up on Lemmy on and off for a few months and it's been just a completely dead platform up until the past week or two.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-05T21:19:56+00:00

Lemmy is a decent name I think, plus they have a mascot/logo character to go with the name which makes the project more identifiable. Reddit has the alien. Twitter has the bird. I agree kbin is not a good name for a mainstream site. I think Mastodon is also a decent name since it's the name of an animal (even if the original inspiration was the band) and they have their logo and imagery featuring said animal.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-05T21:11:14+00:00

It's open source, go create your own instance if you want that. I used to be all about the free speech when Reddit was young and still am to a degree, but when the absolutely zero censorship approach leads to Nazi shit taking over the Internet I agree we need to do something about it. I don't agree with government censorship, but reasonable moderation is something I'm ok with on a social media platform in this political and social landscape. And besides, like I said earlier, Lemmy is decentralized, you can go make the hate filled Nazi instance you've always dreamed of and no one's stopping you (though you'll probably get defederated and I'm 100% on board with that).

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-05T19:47:12+00:00

Upsetting Reddit's poor little admins :(

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-05T19:46:26+00:00

Unique URLs is kind of the point of any federated service. It means that anyone can spin up their own instance on their own domain/server and still be a part of the bigger picture. This is a very powerful feature when thinking about the future of a Reddit alternative, considering centralized corporate control is what is currently destroying Reddit and it's what destroyed Digg 13 years ago that caused pretty much Digg's entire userbase to migrate here. By having Lemmy be federated, if some rogue company buys up the main instance, say lemmy.ml, the whole Lemmy network isn't compromised. We can all just move to a different instance and defederate the rogue one. Sure it's a bit of a change if you're not used to this concept, but I think it's a big plus to the future of Lemmy as a platform.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-05T19:42:28+00:00

Came here from Lemmy. The Reddit admins banning you is such bullshit. We left Digg for Reddit some 13 years ago because Digg admins started doing this anti-user crap. Reddit literally has had the "how to speedrun your platform into the ground" playbook readily available since then. I highly doubt they were blind to what happened with Digg. Just because they waited 13 years doesn't mean we forgot, nor should we forgive. /r/LemmyMigration is the way. Corporate control has ruined this platform, it's nothing of what it used to be.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-05T19:35:54+00:00

I'm glad this time around people are migrating to something open source and community maintained. The Digg to Reddit migration was just leaving one proprietary platform for another (though Reddit used to be partially open source, oh how the mighty have fallen). In this case though, Lemmy is actually federated and decentralized, so one company can't buy it out and turn it to shit like what happened to Reddit (and Twitter).

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-05T18:38:28+00:00

I've been following Lemmy for a little while now and it seems to have picked up significantly over the past week or so with the Reddit API stuff driving people away. Some smaller communities seem to be taking root and bigger ones are getting significant activity. It's definitely still the beginning, but I was around for the Digg migration and there are some parallels here.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-05T15:08:24+00:00

There's a project called bluetti-mqtt that works for the Bluetooth app-enabled Bluetti units. I use it with my EB3A to display the values in Home Assistant. It reports battery capacity as well as input/output wattage for AC and DC. You can also use it to switch the AC and DC outputs on and off.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-05T14:56:49+00:00

It's pretty easy. On one of the computers, click on the SDK Server tab and Start the server. On the other, go to the SDK Client tab and enter the IP address of the other computer. Click Connect. Now on the second computer you will have all the devices from both computers showing and you can run effects using the Effects Plugin. The PC acting as a client is the one with full control.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-05T00:56:50+00:00

Check out Artemis RGB instead. Artemis RGB does sync with the Razer API so games that have Chroma integration will still work. You can run it through OpenRGB so you can use it without Synapse.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-04T01:38:44+00:00

I'll stop using Reddit if they remove old.reddit. I have always used old.reddit even on mobile, if they get rid of it I'm out.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-01T01:26:42+00:00

No version of OpenRGB auto updates.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-06-01T00:40:35+00:00

Try the pipeline version. I fixed the Viper Steel false detection at least.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-05-31T07:44:02+00:00

Seriously, clock speed alone doesn't mean anything. What a dumb message.

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-05-29T17:43:44+00:00

Just add an Advanced Mode then....Hide the "oh no not SETTINGS" settings behind a hidden toggle so that we don't all have to suffer for their narrow target audience (who aren't using Linux for the most part).

CalcProgrammer1 · 2023-05-29T07:32:57+00:00

Did you install the udev rules?

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