The lab

alienware-m15-rgb

OpenRGB and AlienFX both fail on this laptop, so I reverse-engineered the AlienFX API_V5 protocol over hidraw myself, from the device's own HID report descriptor. Native RGB control on Linux, with a CLI, wallpaper colour matching and a GNOME menu. Four releases, and the only working option I know of.

Discipline
Hardware & Firmware
Year
2026 · Public repo
Stack
Python · hidraw · Reverse engineering

The keyboard lighting on an Alienware m15 is controlled over raw HID, and none of the existing tools — OpenRGB, AlienFX, AKBL — drive it. Rather than live with it, I worked out the command set from the device's own HID report descriptor, with the open-source AlienFX-SDK as a reference, and wrote a driver.

It addresses lights by ID rather than by key: it does fills and zones well, and "make the W key red" is still a TODO, because mapping light IDs to physical key positions is its own project.

Four tagged releases, and it is public — one of the few things here a stranger can read the source of and run.

Open to interesting problems

Got something
that needs building?

hello@louisreed.co.uk