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Dancing LEDs - Page 3

post #41 of 192
5/21/05 at 4:14pm
Thread Starter 
In order to control the LEDs I am relying on a driver that Dell installs with QuickSet. So no need for low level Bios calls - The counter part is that QuickSet has to be installed.

Now, let me explain why I don't give the source code right now:

First, my purpose here was nothing more than to make a cool demo for all of us to enjoy. Sure, I would like to see all kind of other applications. It would be absolutly great, and we are all very excited about that. But I was not planning any kind of source code release at first. Now I have to think about this, which brings me to my second point:

I feel like I should have Dell approval before releasing source code that will allow anybody to mess with low level hardware (and possibly dammage their - and others - computers). After all this is all undocumented, right ? (And this is why I put warnings in my initial post). So, I would like to contact Dell about this - which might not be easy (Btw, if anybody from Dell is here, we could use some help ).

Optionnaly, I am thinking about releasing a DLL which would make the functionnality available to programmers without giving up the (possibly hazardous) source code.

I know some of you are going to be upset that I do not give all the code immediately. Well, my answer will be that anybody with sufficient knowledge of Windows can find out how to do this. Plus, after all, I could have kept this for me - and we wouldn't be even talking about it - and that would be no fun.

I hope you understand these concerns.
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post #42 of 192
5/21/05 at 6:24pm
I don't have my XPS yet. But just wondering, does this run in the background taking up mem/cpu power resulting in lower gaming performance, or can I leave it running all the time?
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post #43 of 192
5/21/05 at 6:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by halfchuck
I don't have my XPS yet. But just wondering, does this run in the background taking up mem/cpu power resulting in lower gaming performance, or can I leave it running all the time?
don't think so since it shutsdown itself after finishing its task
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post #44 of 192
5/21/05 at 8:24pm
Video plz... =/
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post #45 of 192
5/21/05 at 10:36pm
If he's using the Quickset driver instead of BIOS calls, it's really not a lot or work. About 3 calls would do it. I posted most of the instructions to do that a few weeks ago in the thread:

http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=77805

It's not that complex. I'm definitely more interested in a "BIOS" version that doesn't use the quickset driver. That would/should be more portable to Linux which is what I care about. If anyone finds ANY information about even ideas on how to do that, please let me know. I'm an good application level C/C++ programmer, but I have no idea where to start with BIOS level things.

Enjoy!
Dan Kulp
XPS Gen 2
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post #46 of 192
5/21/05 at 10:52pm
Next windows interface with timing and other settings such as length of time to do it etc.
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post #47 of 192
5/21/05 at 11:39pm
OK -- if all goes well, you can all download a video of this HERE (Right-click > Save Link As).

It's encoded in DivX (hopefully it works -- this is the first time I've done this).
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post #48 of 192
5/21/05 at 11:48pm
Holy crap. That's awesome!!!! Thanks for the vid GuruX!!!
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post #49 of 192
5/22/05 at 12:07am
No problem. I saw enough posts about a video request, so I figured I'd try out my new digicam's video mode.
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post #50 of 192
5/22/05 at 1:15am
Thread Starter 
jdkulp: You got it right, this how I do it So really, nothing complex. I wish I had seen your post earlier, it would have saved me a lot of pain.

The Linux driver is a good idea - Something to look into.

Ok, I am making some good progress on using the LEDs to monitor CPU usage / network, hdd, etc ...

However, I still have to build an interface around the app - it will take a little time
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post #51 of 192
5/22/05 at 1:26am
That is really great tride, finally someone is doing something creative with their XPS2. Now, hopefully this will lead to the use of these LED's in various applications. Oh the possibilities.
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post #52 of 192
5/22/05 at 1:30am
Thread Starter 
Also, I am looking for an easy way to have an "email received" event.
Anyone knows how to do this?
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post #53 of 192
5/22/05 at 1:36am
great video

looking for the new version of the program
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post #54 of 192
5/22/05 at 1:36am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tride
Also, I am looking for an easy way to have an "email received" event.
Anyone knows how to do this?
email received event?
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post #55 of 192
5/22/05 at 1:44am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
email received event?
Yep, I would like my program to be warned by the system (or another application) whenever an email is received. I would like to avoid the pain of writing myself an email checker (I become lazy ).

If you know how to do this, or have some code to do it (ideally C/C++), please let me know. Another way could be to write a plugin for some standard email reader, but it would require as many plugins as there are email reading software.
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post #56 of 192
5/22/05 at 6:08am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tride
In order to control the LEDs I am relying on a driver that Dell installs with QuickSet. So no need for low level Bios calls - The counter part is that QuickSet has to be installed.

Now, let me explain why I don't give the source code right now:

First, my purpose here was nothing more than to make a cool demo for all of us to enjoy. Sure, I would like to see all kind of other applications. It would be absolutly great, and we are all very excited about that. But I was not planning any kind of source code release at first. Now I have to think about this, which brings me to my second point:

I feel like I should have Dell approval before releasing source code that will allow anybody to mess with low level hardware (and possibly dammage their - and others - computers). After all this is all undocumented, right ? (And this is why I put warnings in my initial post). So, I would like to contact Dell about this - which might not be easy (Btw, if anybody from Dell is here, we could use some help ).

Optionnaly, I am thinking about releasing a DLL which would make the functionnality available to programmers without giving up the (possibly hazardous) source code.

I know some of you are going to be upset that I do not give all the code immediately. Well, my answer will be that anybody with sufficient knowledge of Windows can find out how to do this. Plus, after all, I could have kept this for me - and we wouldn't be even talking about it - and that would be no fun.

I hope you understand these concerns.
As good developer practice.... I totally agree on how to go about releasing potentially dangerous items. I think what might help here would be to help some of the 'educated' people identify the "interfaces" on the particular "driver/dll" and how you are accessing them using an app.

Ofcourse the interfaces could be traced and scanned to ascertain, which ones work how. The reason I ask is I want to do the same and HACK ..Toshiba ConfigFree to work on Dell.. if I can find a way
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post #57 of 192
5/22/05 at 8:06am
Kewl App i tried it and works like a charm.
I cant wait for new versions
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post #58 of 192
5/22/05 at 3:32pm
saw the video ..now even though I dont have an XPS I want create a music based plugin for it.
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post #59 of 192
5/22/05 at 3:56pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Ofcourse the interfaces could be traced and scanned to ascertain, which ones work how.
I only focused on the LED interface, and it works as described in the post by jdkulp:
http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=77805
(even though I am using a buffer of 44 bytes and not 22, the remaining bytes being zeros).

I think there are some other things in the driver. For example, I hope to find some way of querying remaining battery power there.

Btw, any idea of how to query the GPU temp ?
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post #60 of 192
5/22/05 at 11:16pm
Well, I went ahead and created a component to allow anyone to set these values. See the example script (VBS) included for examples on how to use. The type library is built-in so it should easily work from VB/C++/C#/etc.

It works for me and it is fairly well tested, but if your system explodes, don't blame me for running something you downloaded from the Internet. I've been in software development for twenty years but things can and do happen that you never expect. But being as if you have an XPS G2 you have the same hardware as me, it should be fine.

Download Link

The setup script will install the component and example script and register the component. The example script just cycles through the colors, then does some brightness and then resets to my favorite color scheme for gaming.

Enjoy!

OH, if anyone cares, this was written in C++ using ATL for the component library and built using the unicode shared DLL run-time library.

OH, and thanks to API Monitor and I'd also like to acknowledge the work of the other two folks who detailed the API
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