AlienFX Lite (Linux + Windows AlienFX tool)

Yeah no real suport for windows yet as the LibUSB library is problematic on windows (don't really know why as it is supposed to work ... but I don't have time to look it up now !)

 

I can't get python working on my Mint 5 so no luck there sorry

 

added support for M17XR3 to xquas code, credit gos to him though as i didnt really do much.
all works part from the alien head is acting weird some colors work and others make it flicker for a second or go black.

its grate to being able to turn off the light in linux now thanks xqua.
Download pyAlienFX-v0.1b(added_M17XR3).tar.gz for free on Filesonic.com

 

Thx Niai !
That's great !

Hum, do you have a mail so we can get in contact ?
I would like to know if your intrested in being added to the git ? So you can push your changes !
For now I'll just do it with the file you provided ! And I'll add it !

EDIT : For all of you who wonder why the powerbutton is not changed when clicked apply, it's normal as it's the USB AlienFX device which does not allow it ! You need to press save for it to work !
I know there is still some bug with the PowerButton, i'm working on it, but I really don't get what's wrong ...

 

aye i wouldn't mind that, i was looking to see if you had a git or a way to contact you before i uploaded but couldn't find any thing.
also cant find a good way to get my address to you as this forum doesn't seem to have PM?

 

Beta Version 0.1.1

Release note :

0.1.1 Beta
Support for AlienWare M17XR3 ! Thx Niai !
Added Profile Manager, Saving/Loading Profiles !
Improved Advance configurator, removing items from line !
Added Lights ON/OFF (Menu Option)

@Niai : Go there pyalienfx - Python AlienFX Driver + Controller for Alienware computer - Google Project Hosting and contact lefjfou125 or xqua

 

Will this work on the new m14x the only things i see are the media bars and speakes since m14x does not have light for theese or the "Eyes for that matter only left, left center, right center, right,caps/wifi power touchpad and decor vents and ALIENWARE on the front???

 

Can anyone mirror this elsewhere? MegaUpload is [obviously] down and I'm really interested in trying to get this to work on my m14x. Thanks in advance!

 

Would love to see this on a M18x

 

Thanks for the link Xqua

One question is there anyway to use this on Win 7?

Thanks

 

Im running ubuntu 11.10 on my m11x r2 and it says "unable to communicate with alienfx device, either not present or not allowed" or something like that...I'm not sure whats going on and i really like alienfx lite.

p.s i just signed up to ask this so if its in the wrong place that would be helpful too

 

Either your varsion of FX is not supported (I take it you've tried AlienFX Lite, which is no longer maintained) or you haven't run it as root ('sudo' in front of command).

If it's pyAlienFX, you're not running it as root (again, 'sudo' in front of the command), as its description says all M11Xs should be supported.

 

Hey Wattos, All,

I just got my M18X, and since I'm a Linux-only user and wish to do something
slightly more useful with all the RGB LEDs it has, I was through this forum and tried the Java and your collegues' python solutions.

They mostly work, after adding the M18X device number (0x518), apart from 2 zones: the programmable keys on the left of the keyboard, and the power button's eyes. (M18X's Alienhead is lit by the LCD backlight, so that cannot be controlled). Also, 50% of the time, the LED's behave erratically, blinking when asked to stay on, reverting to pre-set states, etc.. Something must be different except a few codes.

Now, I'd be happy to contribute M18X patches for you all, to add M18X. But I'd also like to produce some lower-level library or API to based interface work on.

In your initial post you write you got the protocol. Would you share it so I at least know what's supposed to be (I've no time to reverse-engineer this from your code..). I can't seem to find it online..

Prethanks,
Frank.

 

Hi Frank,

I was wondering if you were able to get the region codes for the Macro keys and the right ones for the Eyes? I have a M18X R2. I was able to get the pyalienfx program to work for my laptop but the eyes are not working and the macro keys are not defined. I have searched numerous code and nothing for our new laptop. I figured I would ask before I post in the Dell Community forum.

Thanks,
Tony

 

Anyone still have this?

 

Why is the sourceforge page emptied out? I was hoping to try and contribute, but now I can't even get a download link...

 

Hey guys !

Just in case your still trying to get that old soft to work with your model
Check out pyAlienFX !
A full python coded driver which works with most models !!

pyalienfx - Python AlienFX Driver + Controller for Alienware computer - Google Project Hosting

And the version 1.0 stable is on it's way ! I just need to package it !

 

I wonder first why you would like to use in on Win7 as there is the official driver ... but in case you still want to do so you should be able to do so ...
you might run into some problem with libUSB though ...
But try

On which project do you want to work ? pyAlienFX ? In that case it's on a google code project !

Hey give me a shout for the m18x !
I've been trying to work with someone to get the macrokey to work on pyAlienFX !

Give me a shout ! I already made such API and I'm sure we can work out the detail of the eratics behaviour on the m18x !

 

First sorry for the double post but that one needs to be posted

The V1.0 of pyAlienFX is out !

A lot of new stuff along with a new and shinny GUI !

Deb File
Tar.gz File

Enjoy and please report bugs and give me feedback if you can It will be helpful

Xqua/Ledjfou125

 

Congratulation Xqua/Ledjifou and thank you very very much!

Very nice job, I hope that everyone that is searching for alienfx under linux will enjoy your soft!
Using Bumblebee-project and Pyalienfx, my sweet netbook is a most have!
Test it now guys!

Pirate

 

Thanks

I keep working and debugging it as people send me bug reports for differents computer but I crave for developper (or at least people who can understand python) with other Alienware model to help me out !
Indeed I only have one model and I developped something that should work on multiple computer

 

Do we have to uninstall Alienware's AlienFX or just exit the app for this to work?

Also, is the morphing animation speed pretty fast? One thing I didn't like about the OEM AlienFX is that the morph speed is slow, even at the "fastest" setting.

Also, are we able to disable the light around the touchpad? The OEM AFX doesn't let you turn off the touchpad / power / media button lights. Ideally, I'd like to create a "night mode" that lets the keyboard simply morph between red and black.

Great work guys!

...just came back from the Wiki, how do you install this on Windows 8? Wiki looks like it only applies to Linux? https://code.google.com/p/pyalienfx/wiki/HowToInstall

 

Hey !

Well for the speed it is tunable but I am not sure if you'll get faster than OEM...
f you g
For turning off the lights you'll have to try ! Normally yes !

Finally for windows 8 noooo idea dude sorry ... but I can tell you that in THEORY if you get all libraries it should work,

you need python
python gtk
gtk
libusb

Tell me if you manage to make it work ! I'm willing to try to help you !

 

Off topic (and off forum!!!) but can someone please tell me whether pyAlienFX can be used on an Alienware desktop running Vista Home Premium 64.

 

Not as it is !

I wonder why you would need that as there is the command center ...

 

The Command Center is "bloated" with other apps which I do not need. I am interested in a lite version.

 

Sorry to bump an oldie, but I found this tool (had to dig a lot to find a working link) and it works good for me on Windows 8.1 Update 1 x64. I'm using JRE7 and I have it run in a schedule at startup. Only bug I can see is that I have to open the 'Show alienxfxlite' once a boot from the notification area so that it registers.. works great otherwise. Thanks a lot.

 

Hi,

Could you please detail how you got it working. I'm running Windows 8.1 x64 as well but I get an error "The application was unable to communicate with the alienfx device. The device is either not present or the app lacks sufficient rights to access the device."

I'm using the Alienware 14 2013 model.

 

Likewise looking for help using the python version on Windows (Win 7 for me). I'm at the point of installing libusb, but there's no clear information about how to do that for Python on Windows. EDIT: pretty much solved this - see below

I think it party depends on how the tool was written - does it require PyUSB? Or python-libusb1? @Xqua what bindings did you use? EDIT: Author has embedded PyUSB in his code so you only need to set up driver and dll

For the libusb backend, there's a couple different versions available for Windows, with some instructions for how you can compile it into your applications, but that's not helpful for an interpreted language, so has anyone here pieced this all together, even if the app itself has bugs? EDIT: solved; see below

 

Still have no idea about libusb, but the installer for pyAlienFX needs a fix for windows. The file install.py in the main pyalienfx folder has this line:

if os.getuid() != 0:

Windows doesn't have getuid, so this line needs to be changed to:

if os.name != "nt" and os.getuid() != 0:

Also, all the control characters being used to highlight parts of the text output of course don't work in Windows, so the output is almost unreadable. Would be nice if you found a more portable way of adding bling to the output.

Windows also doesn't seem to have chmod which causes the code that writes the "Bin" script to try to write it twice to two different places: Generally speaking (not just for Windows), the try/except block should be made more specific to the different errors that can happen on open/write/close/chmod otherwise you get unexpected results.

Specifically for Windows, the file paths assume linux so they are completely wrong, so the files get written to the same folder you ran the script from. The code looks specifically crafted for someone using Unity, so this project might not even be functional for someone on another distro. Moreover, the written scripts are .sh scripts, so those won't work in Windows. Fine with me, we just need to know how to execute the pyAlienFX_daemon.py directly.

Oddly, since Windows doesn't appear to cause an exception to write to linux file paths (as evidenced by having got as far as the chmod command), I am not finding the pyalienfx.desktop file written anywhere. This is a head-scratcher, but ultimately, it needs to have a Windows-compatible alternative.

I guess the real upshot is that this tool (well, at least the installer) is written with a lot of assumptions and as a result isn't very portable, possibly even in the linux world.

Personally, I'm curious if a background process listening over TCP/IP is necessary if I want to change colors once or twice a year. Can the code be refactored into something that can just prod the alienware device to change colors once and be done with it? I'd be interested to help if that could be achieved, but I don't know the details of how the device is accessible and how the API works. Or do I misunderstand - does the TCP/IP service shut down once you end the program, at least if you run the daemon manually?

 

OK, for Windows users, here's how I think you can get this working, or at least a good start.

NOTE: I did this on Windows 7, no idea about Win 8

NOTE: The pyalienfx project seems to have the PyUSB project code embedded directly in it, which is important to know.

Download the newest libusb code from the supposed legacy libusb project site (this project is currently maintained, but the libusb.info site claims libusb.org is obsolete... is this just arrogance or is there a technical difference?):

http://sourceforge.net/projects/libusb/files/libusb-1.0/

Navigate to your desired (usually the newest) package and make sure to download the "-win" file, such as libusb-1.0.19-rc1-win.7z. Once you have the package, extract the file "libusb-1.0.dll" from the "MS32\dll" folder and put it somewhere in the Python path on your system. For me, although C:\Windows\System 32 is in my path on the command line, it's not in Python's path. Whatever, I just put the file in C:\Python27 and Python found it there. Good enough.

Note - there are a few other libusb and/or libusb-windows projects out there, and maybe they would also work, but I didn't try them.

EDIT: It appears you might also need to assign a driver specifically for the ALienFX device on your system in addition to all this. I have seen Python be able to connect to the device without doing this, which confuses me a little and makes me wonder if this step is necessary, but it might be.... go get Zadig: http://zadig.akeo.ie/ and follow the instructions - you may need to tell it to show all devices if there is already a driver assigned to the device, but everything should be obvious. Use the WinUSB driver. You can always go find that device in your device manager and roll back the driver if you need.

For pyAlienFX, you can skip the installation entirely, since it's broken and irrelevant on Windows. Go to the place you extracted the pyalienfx package and execute pyAlienFX_daemon.py directly. EDIT: however, the GUI seems to be launched with the "Indicator" file, and that code is built with all kinds of assumptions that you are using Unity. Did someone claim this was portable?!? Not in the least. One package the author leans on in no small way is appindicator, but he completely fails to mention this. What's more, appindicator seems to be iffy when you leave Unity, so the pyAlienFX code may not work in other Linux environments, not to mention Windows. Why would there even be any hints dropped that it "might" work on Windows????!!!!! It is not compatible with Windows. End of story.

Oh, and just another note of Windows incompatibilities: the calls to (de/a)ttach_kernel_driver are not implemented in Windows and need to be skipped as such. (in the AlienFXEngine.py file)

 

How to add your computer to the list of known computers if it's not already there. In Linux, people seem to be doing this:

sudo lsusb | grep -i alien

Output seems to be like this:

Bus 002 Device 005: ID 187c:0513 Alienware Corporation

The needed vendor ID is always the same: 187c and in this case, the product ID is 0513 (both in hex).

In Windows, I just fished around in the Device Manager until I found a HID device (it's very generic looking, no indication what it is or what it does, or that it comes from Dell), clicked on its properties and saw that same vendor ID and a very similar product ID.

Note, Alienware 18 product ID seems to be 0523

FYI, here's the latest list of supported computers and a discussion with people trying to add their devices:

https://code.google.com/p/pyalienfx/wiki/SupportedComputer

Also, note that the current release package for pyalienfx does NOT have all the latest computers. You can get the newest code by going here and downloading a zip of the code ( https://code.google.com/p/pyalienfx/source/browse/).

 

[deleted]

 

Just requesting a help, you seem to have extracted the AlienFX program.

Is it possible that you remove a part of the program that checks if your motherboard is dell/3rd party so AlienFX would work on desktop Alienware with 3rd party motherboard?

Thanks in advance!

 

If you're asking me, I'm not sure. I am digging around in pyAlienFx not the java program that this thread started with. But having read through the python version a bit, it's all down to finding the correct USB hardware IDs (vendor and product). For most Dell products, the vendor ID is the same, but I'm not sure what device you have in your desktop and if it would have a different vendor ID. Moreover, the protocol spoken by the AlienFX device is specific to how Dell built it, so you'd need to figure out if what you have is compatible with that as well.

 

So after spending way too much time digging around in pyAlienFX and finding it to be built in a non-portable manner (to be nice), I am thinking that it would be nice to have a Python AlienFX app that works in Windows. From what I understand, the Java version might be dead, but I also refuse to install Java on my machine.

It may be possible to salvage some of the pyAlienFX code to shortcut the work needed on the protocol end of things, but I am out of time for now to try to reverse engineer how the pyAlienFX_Indicator.py code sends requests via the daemon to pyAlienFX_Engine.py (yes, you'll have to deconstruct another protocol which is not documented at all).

Since I only change colors and whatnot very rarely, I don't see that a GUI is necessary...

Would be fun to take this project and keep building it, but I personally have to let this lay for now so I hope someone else can pick it up. Read my posts above for hints on what you need to pull out of the code if you borrow from pyAlienFX.