I've decided to move the official home of OpenRGB on Lemmy to a different instance. I started on lemmy.ml because it was hosted by the Lemmy developers, but this instance has a certain (rather negative) reputation across the greater Threadiverse. I also prefer the mlmym (old Reddit style) instance and lemmy.today has this (https://old.lemmy.today/c/OpenRGB).

I will be over there on my lemmy.today account. Please join this new community to continue our OpenRGB presence on Lemmy!

Edit: ![email protected]

I was hesitant to update the Flatpak build to a release candidate, but 1.0rc2 is the build we're recommending on openrgb.org and a bunch of distros have packaged it. To be fair, if there were more digits between 0.9 and 1.0 these rcs would've been proper releases. With a lot of users having success with 1.0rc2 on other platforms, 1.0 still being a ways out do to some backend reworks and cleanups, and 0.9 being ancient now, I've gone ahead and updated the Flatpak release to 1.0rc2. You will still have to setup udev rules outside of Flatpak, as that is a limitation of Flatpak itself.

I've tagged the second Release Candidate build for OpenRGB 1.0. This build has quite a few user interface improvements over the previous 1.0rc1 release candidate build as well as some new device support and bug fixes. However, the main reason for this release candidate is that Microsoft has started flagging the WinRing0 driver we use for low-level IO (SMBus, Super-IO, etc) as vulnerable and Windows Defender is now tampering with OpenRGB installations, deleting this driver and breaking access to RAM and motherboard RGB controls. We have been working to replace WinRing0 with a new driver called PawnIO (https://pawnio.eu/) which is more secure as it keeps all of the SMBus controller accessing code kernel-side in signed Pawn modules. Now that we've resolved all of the bugs with PawnIO, I've decided to make a release candidate both to sunset the old WinRing0 support as well as introduce the new PawnIO support. For this reason there are two 1.0rc2 versions for Windows - 1.0rc2wr0 (with WinRing0) and 1.0rc2 (with PawnIO). PawnIO has two major caveats compared to WinRing0 which is why I wanted to publish a final WinRing0 build - it doesn't support 32-bit and it requires Administrator access all the time. If you have a use case where you need a 32-bit OpenRGB build that can access SMBus, you're stuck with WinRing0. Going forward, the OpenRGB Windows Installer gives you the option to install OpenRGB as a system service, which gets around the Administrator requirement by running the OpenRGB backend as a service. The GUI can then be used as a normal user, it just connects to the service using the SDK protocol instead of connecting directly to hardware. However, there are some UI inconveniences that running as a service still has (settings changes only affect the local copy, not the service, so configuring manually added devices, disabling devices, etc. requires manual config tweaking for the service's copy of the settings files).

I still want to do one major rework before 1.0 final. This will focus on some plugin API changes and SDK protocol changes to hopefully make using OpenRGB in client/server mode a better experience.

I have also tagged 1.0rc2 builds for the OpenRGB plugins. These rc2 builds of the plugins will work with OpenRGB 1.0rc1 and 1.0rc2.

OpenRGB 1.0rc1 is the first release candidate build before the upcoming official 1.0 release. This build should be considered stable, but we're looking to track down any major last-minute bugs before release. The plugin API has been updated, so if you're upgrading from 0.9 you will need to upgrade your plugins to the latest pipeline versions.

Builds for 1.0rc1 have been posted on https://openrgb.org/ as well.

AMDGPU driver maintainer Alex Deucher posted patches for enabling the OEM I2C interface on AMD GPUs on Linux. This interface is necessary for OpenRGB to be able to communicate with and control RGB devices on the graphics card PCB and to this point has only been available to Windows users of OpenRGB. No changes should be necessary to OpenRGB itself, once you install an updated kernel with these changes then your supported AMD GPU should be detected! I have tested Alex's development branch and was able to control my ASUS TUF RX7800XT and Sapphire Nitro+ RX580 lighting.

I did a video tutorial and demonstration showing the Steam, FEX Emulator, and Distrobox setup I documented on the postmarketOS wiki here:

https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Steam

I go through the setup process for the Ubuntu container, FEX emulator, Steam, and then install and test two games - Half Life 2: Lost Coast and Tomb Raider (2013) to demonstrate gaming performance on an ARM device (in this case a Xiaomi Pad 5 Pro with Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 chip).

I managed to get Steam installed on my OnePlus 6T and Xiaomi Pad 5 Pro, both running postmarketOS, using Distrobox to create an Ubuntu 24.04 container and then installing FEX-Emu inside of it. I wrote up a guide on the postmarketOS wiki on how to do it, some issues I ran into, some tips on how to get around those issues, and a list of games I've tested. Feel free to expand upon this list if you try it out. Older games such as Half Life 2 are quite playable, especially if your device supports keyboard and mouse input. I have not yet tested using a controller.

I have added support for system-wide plugin installations in Linux for the upcoming 1.0 release. The plugin files can be installed system-wide to the /usr/lib/openrgb/plugins path, which allows them to be provided by distribution packages rather than manually downloading them.

I have created AUR packages for the following plugins and they have been picked up by the Chaotic AUR repository if you want binary builds.

• openrgb-plugin-e131-receiver-git
• openrgb-plugin-effects-git
• openrgb-plugin-hardware-sync-git
• openrgb-plugin-visual-map-git

I plan to update the rest of the plugins on https://gitlab.com/OpenRGBDevelopers and get them into the AUR as well before 1.0 releases. Until that happens, you will need to use the openrgb-git AUR package to utilize these new plugin packages. The current 0.9 release in the main repository does not support system-wide plugin installation.

I made a 3D printed, Arduino-powered desk fan based around a 120mm Corsair QL120 ARGB fan after seeing Noctua's desk fan. I wanted something similar but with RGB. It is based around CorsairLightingProtocol so it syncs with OpenRGB but also has a knob to adjust fan speed and LED brightness directly. I made a video showing it off but if you prefer to read about it, I have project documentation and files (code, assembly instructions, and 3D models) on GitLab here:

https://gitlab.com/CalcProgrammer1/OpenRGBDeskFan

The 3D models are also on Thingiverse:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6655697

I did an interview with Linux YouTuber and podcaster Brodie Robertson on his podcast Tech Over Tea! We talked about the origins of OpenRGB, the challenges we face with reverse engineering, and discuss the OpenPleb initiative. We also talked about some other miscellaneous Linux things.

#OpenRGB 0.9 has been released! Check it out at https://openrgb.org! The full release notes are available on GitLab here:

https://gitlab.com/CalcProgrammer1/OpenRGB/-/releases/release_0.9

After my previous video about the OpenPleb initiative, I wanted to actually demonstrate the process of reverse engineering and show some of the hurdles and pitfalls of trying to understand a protocol without any documentation. This is the second part where I complete the reverse engineering of the effect packet and implement the different modes in my OpenRGB controller.

This is not news, just wanted to pin the most recent release here on Lemmy. It released on November 28, 2022. The next release, 0.9, is still being worked on but as always you can try the latest pipeline build at https://openrgb.org/#pl for the latest supported devices and features.

It looks like the OpenPleb initiative, a joint effort from Level1Techs and Gamers Nexus to get manufacturers to be more open with their protocol and interface documentation, is working! Case vendor HYTE seems interested and said they're willing to send me some sample devices along with protocol documentation!

This is the first manufacturer I've seen comment on the OpenPleb initiative publicly.

I wanted to demonstrate the reverse engineering process we use to figure out how to talk to devices for OpenRGB so I made a video where I start reverse engineering the RGB on the new ASUS ROG Ally. I wanted viewers to get a feel for how confusing and time-consuming this can be, especially with the new OpenPleb initiative that is trying to get manufacturers to open up and provide protocol documentation that would render reverse engineering unnecessary.

I made this video discussing my thoughts on the OpenPleb initiative by Wendell of Level1Techs and Steve of Gamers Nexus. As the developer of OpenRGB, the OpenPleb initiative, which aims to work with hardware vendors to open up documentation for proprietary protocols used for consumer PC hardware, could be a massive boon for OpenRGB development as at the moment almost everything we add is reverse engineered. Having access to protocol documentation would improve the quality of our code and the efficiency in which we can release it.

For reference, I'd recommend watching Steve's original video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKOtvOqa_vM&t=0s

I posted this on /r/hardware because Steve's video got a lot of traction there, but I wasn't necessarily happy about posting on Reddit, so here it is for Lemmy.