Lighting Node Pro
I generally find LEDs distracting, but do find their use in signalling information such as various device temperatures.
I reversed the protocol of the Corsair LL fan LEDs+Lighting Node Pro controller because I wanted there to be some Linux support and found there was none.
I used wireshark in Windows, turned all fans off, started recording, and then set static R, G, and B values with varying fan counts to figure out how it all worked.
How to use this as an end-user
Please note this ONLY works with Lighting Node Pro controllers with Corsair LL fans. Other fans can be added but I just haven't dug too deeply as I only have these ones.
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Make sure your udev rules allow you acces to USB devices.
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you MUST provide fan count
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Choose a color or animation, animations are in animations.js if you're curious how they work
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You must leave it running (run with & at the end if you want it to go to background)
Sets all 3 fans to be red
node index.js --fan-count=3 --colors red
Sets fans to red, white and blue
node index.js --fan-count=3 --colors red,white,blue
Tracer Animation
colors are two colors to use for ring and rotating LED
node index.js --fan-count=3 --animation Tracer -p "colors=blue,black"
I want it to go faster! (-r is framerate)
This uses -r for frame rate of 10 per second
node index.js --fan-count=3 --animation Tracer -p "colors=red,white" -r 10
I want different frame rates for all the different fans
Ok I think that's a bit much to ask, but here it is.
node index.js --fan-count=3 --animation Tracer -p "colors=red,black&fps=16,32,48"
Silly 3 fan animation example
node index.js --fan-count=3 --animation RedBlueCollision
If anything ever freezes, just control+c, if it still is frozen, hitting it again will force exit, should work fine the next run. You can use the -x flag to force a USB reset.
-d flag prints the bytes as they're sent down the USB bus.
-s
-b allows you to specify which device if you have multiple.Concepts specific to this implementation
The Corsair LL fans have 16 LEDs, and it just takes simple commands to set the values of those LEDs. The effects you see in Windows are all implemented in software (there's one exception and that's the default rainbow wave which it falls back to if there's no new input).
If the LED configuration is the exact same each run, you can simply send {33}{ff} to "maintain" what was last displayed on the fan LEDs.
So to build animations, we need to have an event stack, and a frame rate. If the frame rate is 1 (1 per second), every second, a frame will be popped off the event stack, and that's what will be sent during subsequent "set colors" requests. When the set is exhausted, it starts back over.
Reversing information
All packets are null padded to 64 bytes
PREAMBLE/INIT
Sent at start when getting into the set color mode
{37}
If num fans is 0 here, it disables all LEDs, important to do if you don't want it to fall back to rainbow after exiting
{35}{00}{00}{<(short)num fans>0}{00}{01}{01} {3b}{00}{01} {38}{00}{02} {34} {37}{01} {34}{01} {38}{01}{01} {33}{ff}
Color Request
3 requests per, 1 for each color channel
{32}{00}{00}{32}{00} ^ Color channel (R=0x00, G=0x01, B=0x02)
16 bytes per fan, if you had one fan, it would be
{ff}{ff}{ff}{ff}{ff}{ff}{ff}{ff}{ff}{ff}{ff}{ff}{ff}{ff}{ff}{ff}
This is for the first 3 fans, If there's 4 fans, only 2 bytes of the 4th fan is done on the first request, after doing all color channels, it does an extension run, that looks like:
{32}{00}{32}{2e} 14 bytes remaining for 4th fan, 16 bytes for 5th fan, 16 bytes for 6th fan.
Why 16 bytes? There's 16 different LEDs. 4 on the inside, and 12 on the outside. Since there's 12, I find it easiest to refer to the positions as positions on a 12-hour clock.
While facing intake (with corsair sticker logo facing you)
1st - top inner 2nd - inner left 3rd - inner bottom 4th - inner right
5th - 10 O'Clock 6th - 9 O'Clock 7th - 8 O'Clock 8th - 7 O'Clock 9th - 6 O'Clock
10th - 5 O'Clock 11th - 4 O'Clock 12th - 3 O'Clock 13th - 2 O'Clock 14th - 1 O'Clock
15th - 12 O'Clock 16th - 11 O'Clock