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Running an up-to-date Gentoo on my Sager NP8298 (Clevo P177SM-A), and I am heartbreakingly close to having all of my hardware running beautifully. I found a nice open source driver to run my keyboard backlight at this GitHub repo, but the problem was it was made for a Clevo chassis that didn't have the touchpad light that mine does. Kinda tacky, I know, but the problem is that the default color for the touchpad light is blue, and can be kind of distracting when the keyboard is set to a different color.

I'd at least like to be able to turn the light off, if not control its color. I have a Windows install and am able to access the proprietary driver that came with the computer. I just don't quite know where to start on trying to modify this driver, if there were some Windows utilities that I could use to see what the driver is doing and how to access the LED programatically, it would be a huge help. Any ideas?

Other functionality that I'd like to add is Fn+Num pad 7 through 9 for toggling the left, center, and right part of the keyboard individually, and Fn+5 for a num pad light toggle, as the Windows driver does. I just need to know what signals need to be sent to the hardware and how to send them.

Whatever I end up with I'll be sure to fork the project and share the results with other users of this hardware.

vinnydiehl
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You need the source code of driver you want to change. With that and all required bits and bobs (a.k.a. dependences) you can change it to do whatever you want.

That said, there are quite a few things to consider. You need to know, at least at a reasonable level, the language used to build the driver, platform dependencies if any.

I've done similar work for some network drivers like 15 years ago and no it's not a fun job.

Desorder
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  • I've linked to the source code of the driver that I'm using. It seems like it would be a simple edit once I figure out what WMI `method_id` to send to `wmi_evaluate_method()`. – vinnydiehl Sep 20 '14 at 07:56
  • Well, that depends on your definition of _fun_. Personally, I find it quite _funny_. – rodrigo Sep 20 '14 at 11:58
  • Playing with hardware is fun. Write that type of code is also fun. Scruff the internet looking for that lil include you need is not fun. Do that 20 times is not fun either. – Desorder Sep 21 '14 at 05:27