Ambilight for alienfx

Just wanted to share with the rest of you guys what we got going over on the m11x forum.

It makes your lights match the overall color of your screen kinda like those samsung tvs do.

I have not tested it yet on my own machine, but from the other 2 that have they say it works well.

Not sure if it will work for other models either, but you guys can test that out.

Enjoy!

Credits
thehelios and Greywind for getting it working and reading the russian stuff
ejohnson for stumbling onto the youtube videos and website.


http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m11x/598151-alienfx-lightpack.html

‪AlienFX and LightPack‬‏ - YouTube

‪LightPack‬‏ - YouTube


Computers confirmed to work
tactx keyboard
tactx mouse
m11xr1
m14xr1
m15xr1
m17xr2
m17xr3
m18xr1

 

wow, thank you! will be trying this right now!

 

After you try it out, post your specs on your machine and how well it works!

 

Dang im on my mobile right now but will try this out after. Seems like an intriguing idea.

 

Dude this awsome, im gonna try on the m17x r3

 

Yeh works awsome on the M17x R3. Just extracted it and ran the exe. file. How do i disable it?

Oh and +1 rep

 

hmm... not sure how to turn it off, when I get home and actually try it my self I will see if I can figure it out.

 

Found a way. If you wanna disable, on the task bar is a lightpack icon just right click and select "turn off", then go to Alienware command center and "go dark" before "going light"

 

specs are in the sig, works great, but any idea to have multiple colors for the different zones instead of one color? also all the options - what exactly do they do?

 

Btw did i mention this rocks! thank you.

 

It also works with the tactx keyboard and mouse!

 

This program (lightpack) was initially made for use with monitors and special USB controller+LED to achieve sort of ambilight effect for your screen. To understand how it works... Each zone there is on the screen (8 in total) captures sort of a screenshot in the zone's range, calculates average colour and outputs it via USB controller to corresponding LED. This program with some modifications sends this data not to USB controller, but to AlienFX controller instead. So you should understand, that only viable option for proper ambilight effect for multiple colours on your keyboard would be to make something like 3-4 vertically stretched zones (or something like that, we have only 1 on m11x) and assign each of them to corresponding part of the keyboard. Not sure, that it can be done now, because AlienFX is not a primary focus of developers right now, I guess now it's more like proof of a concept, so average colour now is more viable solution.

And about options:
Capture rate (or its Grab Frequency on english) - is something that you want as high as possible, to achieve adequate color change. Actually you do not need all 8 zones right now, as it would make program more slow. For me 1 zone is enough, i took zone 1 and stretched in completely through bottom of a screen leaving 2\3 of height above it unused... sort of). It all depends on settings, but capture rate shouldn't be less then 15-20 in average. Disabling Aero helps a lot with framerate btw.
Slowdown grab - it's a rate, how fast program captures colour from images. If you want to increase capture rate and get more adequate colour indication - set it lower, but be careful not to set it too low - it may seriously reduce performance. Optimal range for this option - 0-93.
Minimum level of sensitivity - it's a temporal option, which will be removed in future releases of a program. You should set it lower only when black is being represented as some other colour in dark scenes. It would be better not to touch it at all. Optimal range for this option - 0-10.

Next tab: Device
Frequency - frequency of LED refresh rate. It's a main indicator of how smooth everything works.
Timer - this setting is inversely proportional to frequency. Set it lower to increase smoothness, but you'll decrease performance a bit.
Color depth - number of colour channels being used to transit from one colour to another. It's inversely proportional to frequency. Basically it makes colour transition more smooth with cost of performance. Optimal values are in range from 16 to 128.
USB send data blabla - leave it on, its a temporal testing option, you won't need it off

 

Was doing some testing last night with the program. Runs great even though I dont have too many videos to test it with on my computer. But I did try and run it with battlefield 2 and it wouldnt transfer my screen colors to the keyboard.... going to test a few other games this weekend to see if they work with it.

 

Alright guys, here's a deal.
I've contacted developers and here's what I've got:
They'll release new version soon, but right now they are kinda busy with their primary project, so if there is any one with skills in C++ and alienware laptop and who is willing to help developers out there with testing and stuff - please do so, if you got any questions concerning code and stuff - you may ask them here or approach devs directly via mail. This software needs some fine tuning for AlienFX, so help would be greatly appreciated.
Also if you could - please post youtube videos with demos of how lightpack works with different laptop models (m11, m14, m15 and so on), so devs can get better idea what's going on, because controllers and zones are bit different on different models.

 

I can attempt to assist with the C++ stuff. What do they need help with exactly?

 

Being a gaming laptop I tried some games with this and games that use fullscreen mode won't function with the alienfx it will just turn them off. I would suggest that if you wish to game with these lights on then you will need to make sure that you have a windowed mode (fullscreen) such as in WoW or certain games. Anyone else seeing this will fullscreen games?

 

Yeah I couldnt get it to run on games either, but videos running full screen were great.

 

I can confirm that it doesn't work with fullscreen games yet, but frankly speaking, I guess that right now it would seriously affect the performance anyway, so it may not be really that useful. All I can say that devs aim to have a working and efficient module for alienFX for this program, so I guess we may see improvements in some time.
Posting video demos of how it works on various machines right now may help as well in further development.

 

I will post a video tonight of how it works on my m11xr1 with the tactx keyboard and mouse.

 

So I seem to be having some issues with playback on mine.... the grills and the alienware word get random flashes of green or red... not sure why.

But anyways, upload your profiles from the "profiles" tab (open in text editor)

 

will it work on an m18x? where can I get it?!

 

First post in this thread, go there.

 

Very nice! So, no luck for M18x owners?

 

Dont think we have any that have tested yet... but it works on all the other models.

 

Ok, I'll give it a shot!

 

Works on M18x but is there a way to optimize it so it takes less resources? It slows down the system, lol

 

Not sure yet. We need someone who knows c++ to talk with the developers of it to try to work out some of the kinks and try to get all the lighting zones working right.

 

someone should make a thread requesting it, to gather more people.

 

Here I wrote a little sum up on options, but for tl;dr'erers I'll make it shorter:

To increase performance:
- Disable aero (very high boost)
- Make only 1 lightzone, disable the rest
- Decrease color depth (make it 64 or less, visually no difference visible)
- Increase slowdown grab
- Increase timer
And remember, that AlienFX option is on testing stage only.

 

Hmmmm Im trying to get it to work. I downloaded the zip, unzipped it into a random folder in my documents folder, rand the application and got the half moon icon on the bottom right. Although when I attempt to do anything with the half moon (Double click, right click, ect) it does nothing and eventually disappears after 20 ish seconds. What am I doing wrong?

 

Great options, I can't have a laptop w/out a light up keyboard.