Thinking inside a bigger box - Latest Comments in Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Johannes Brodwall — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:16:39 -0000

HI, Sean

The program is a command line program, double clicking will produce exactly the message you see. Please execute the command on the command. If you don't know how to do this, you can try out Daniel's description in these comments.

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Sean — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 19:23:43 -0000

Is there anyway to get this to run on VISTA, when I run the exe, it opens a Command window but immediatly closes.

Any help would be appreciated.

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Johannes Brodwall — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:56:59 -0000

Hi, Patrick

I expect that Dell has a different driver for the XPS 720. As I don't have access to an XPS 720 it is not possible for me to fix this. If you're familiar with C code, you can twiddle around the indices in the buffer and see what happens. If you can find out how to work it, I'll include your modifications in my source code (if we can make a version that works with both the laptop and desktop).

Also, you could look into the Dell official Light FX program, which is roughly equivalent to mine. See http://www.dell.com/html/global/xps/lightfx/ind...

Regarding color choice - this is sadly not possible. My program exposes the full range supported by the XPS laptop at least.

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

patrick — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:54:57 -0000

congratulations! nice work.

i tried your app on a xps720 desktop. it works basically, but has glitches. i tested the modified lightcycle-version of Scott Quibell with 50 cycles and found the following:

-side: will turn back&frontlow OFF, fronttop=static on
-front: will turn back&fronttop OFF, frontlow=static on
-top: will turn frontlow&fronttop OFF, back pluses 50 times
-all: all 3 groups pluse 50 times correctly

does this help you to pinpoint the difference? can you fix things for xps720?
and finally: in the making, did yousee ANY chance that the LED's could be adressed with RGB values os something more precise than the 16 basecolors?

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Johannes Brodwall — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:53:04 -0000

Hi, Jim

Thanks for the positive feedback. I see no reason that XPS M1210 could be controlled the same way. You probably need the QuickSet tool from Dell (http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/downl...). This lets you control the lights directly, and it also installs the drivers needed for my program.

There is actually a WinAmp plugin for XPS lights that does what you want: http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details/146182. Sadly, there is not source code available for it.

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Jim Danz — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 20:27:51 -0000

This is totally cool stuff. Does anyone know if the front lights on the XPS m1210 laptop can be controlled in a similar fashion? I'm a little bit pessimistic because I've only manually turned them on/off from the BIOS and don't see a way to do it with the OS running... but I have been dreaming about sound-reactive front lights since day one of this system! Any help or direction greatly appreciated.

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Johannes Brodwall — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 13:04:41 -0000

Hi, Chris

Thank you for your question. This really should be a FAQ entry by now. Probably the most asked question about the tool.

xps_led_control doesn't work without the Dell drivers. It looks like you need the QuickSet tool http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/downl...

Also notice that there after my post, Dell came out with new tools for the XPS. You can find more info at http://www.dell.com/html/global/xps/lightfx/ind....

Hope this helps.

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Chris Groothoff — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 22:28:02 -0000

This looks like a great utility but when I have tried this utility on my XPS M1730 and it generates the following error, any suggestions

Chris

D:\Downloads>xps_led_control /?
usage: xps_led_control [-all color] [-front color] [-top color] [-side color] [-
bright value] [-touchpad 0|1]
Where color is a number from 0-16
and brightness value is a number from 0-7

(C) Copyright Johannes Brodwall , 2006
Some rights reserved: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

D:\Downloads>xps_led_control -touchpad 0
CreateFileA(\\.\APPDRV) failed: 0x2

D:\Downloads>xps_led_control -touchpad 0
CreateFileA(\\.\APPDRV) failed: 0x2

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Johannes Brodwall — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 12:57:16 -0000

Hi fLaMeCoRe,

I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to get the lights to work from a WoW addon, and I think it sounds like a super-cool idea. However, I would recommend that you look into the official Dell LightFX SDK for this. It is no harder to use than my code, and it comes official from Dell.

Cheers,
~Johannes

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

fLaMeCoRe — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 05:16:44 -0000

hi there,
the prog is done realy nice.
i just got one question!

its about WoW (World of Warcraft)
do u think it is possible to accsess the leds through an addoningame?
im justing playing around with the ace2 libs.
just can create easy addons for the game, but dont have the know-how to say its possible or to create/implement the code.

hope u can give me the answer im searching 4 and may help me in my wish of an XPS LED WoW addon!

fLaMeCoRe

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

gameman — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 11:52:53 -0000

I like this program. Do you have the option of fading and chasing also? How many colors can it display in this programe. I have found something semilar in this website www.lunaraccents.com/technology-programmable-LE...
but it is not exactly what I am looking for.

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Johannes Brodwall — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 03:49:48 -0000

Thanks for the feedback Marcus. The tool is meant mostly for scripting and automatically changing the colors. If you just want the lights to be a different colors, the quickset program is your friend.

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Marcus Bakker — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 11:52:18 -0000

still doesnt do anything.i find it easier to use the dell quickset program for the xps or the effect builder program to control the leds.this is to complicated. ty anyway.

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Marcus Bakker — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 11:46:40 -0000

i'm gona try it l8ter.ty 4 ure help

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Johannes Brodwall — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 20:13:52 -0000

Hi, Marcus

The xps_led_control is a command line program. You have to download it to a directory (e.g. c:\) and start up a cmd shell (Start -> Run: cmd). In the command shell, you enter "c:\xps_led_control -all 1", for example. Or "c:\xps_led_control -help" for more instructions.

Hope this helps.

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Marcus Bakker — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:28:19 -0000

i have tried to download this link "XPS Led Control executable program (”xps_led_control -help” for usage)" but after pressing run the second time it jst dissapears and never popups again. can u tell me why this is or give more detailed instructions on how to change the colours? ty

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Oliver — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:07:22 -0000

Hard to find as Google didn't spider it so far:

libsmbios has support for this since 13.03.2007. And don't you say Dell doesn't support Linux ;)

http://linux.dell.com/libsmbios/

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Johannes Brodwall — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 17:55:58 -0000

Hi, Oliver. I haven't heard of anyone who has gotten this to work under Linux. To other readers: A solution would be very welcome!

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Oliver — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 12:08:19 -0000

Did anyone ever found out what appdrv.sys does? I really would like to see this working on Linux.

Oliver

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Johannes Brodwall — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 08:49:10 -0000

Hi, Phixx

I have no idea. If you have a XPS Desktop, why don't you try it out. I am very interested to know if it works. If it doesn't work, but you're up for some hacking, you can use API monitor as per my original blog post to see how the lights are controlled.

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Phixx — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 08:32:37 -0000

Do you know if this utility works on the XPS Desktops ?

And if not, do you know a way to control Desktop Vanity Lights ?

- Phixx

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Daniel Nicholson — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 01:06:41 -0000

I was just mucking around with calls to 'xps_led_control' and came up with this to make your XPS flash like a police car, just create a new DOS batch script paste in the following, save it to the same directory as 'xps_led_control.exe' and run it:
------------------------------------------

@echo off
echo Police!

:test

xps_led_control.exe -front 1 -side 10 -top 1 -bright 2
xps_led_control.exe -front 1 -side 10 -top 1 -bright 2
xps_led_control.exe -front 1 -side 10 -top 1 -bright 2
xps_led_control.exe -front 1 -side 10 -top 1 -bright 2
xps_led_control.exe -front 1 -side 10 -top 1 -bright 4
xps_led_control.exe -front 1 -side 10 -top 1 -bright 4
xps_led_control.exe -front 1 -side 10 -top 1 -bright 7
xps_led_control.exe -front 1 -side 10 -top 1 -bright 7
xps_led_control.exe -front 1 -side 10 -top 1 -bright 7
xps_led_control.exe -front 1 -side 10 -top 1 -bright 7
xps_led_control.exe -front 1 -side 10 -top 1 -bright 4
xps_led_control.exe -front 1 -side 10 -top 1 -bright 4
xps_led_control.exe -front 1 -side 10 -top 1 -bright 2
xps_led_control.exe -front 1 -side 10 -top 1 -bright 2
xps_led_control.exe -front 1 -side 10 -top 1 -bright 2
xps_led_control.exe -front 1 -side 10 -top 1 -bright 2
xps_led_control.exe -front 10 -side 1 -top 10 -bright 2
xps_led_control.exe -front 10 -side 1 -top 10 -bright 2
xps_led_control.exe -front 10 -side 1 -top 10 -bright 2
xps_led_control.exe -front 10 -side 1 -top 10 -bright 2
xps_led_control.exe -front 10 -side 1 -top 10 -bright 4
xps_led_control.exe -front 10 -side 1 -top 10 -bright 4
xps_led_control.exe -front 10 -side 1 -top 10 -bright 7
xps_led_control.exe -front 10 -side 1 -top 10 -bright 7
xps_led_control.exe -front 10 -side 1 -top 10 -bright 7
xps_led_control.exe -front 10 -side 1 -top 10 -bright 7
xps_led_control.exe -front 10 -side 1 -top 10 -bright 4
xps_led_control.exe -front 10 -side 1 -top 10 -bright 4
xps_led_control.exe -front 10 -side 1 -top 10 -bright 2
xps_led_control.exe -front 10 -side 1 -top 10 -bright 2
xps_led_control.exe -front 10 -side 1 -top 10 -bright 2
xps_led_control.exe -front 10 -side 1 -top 10 -bright 2

goto test

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Litrik De Roy — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 14:56:31 -0000

To all Java developers out there,

I have finished the Eclipse plug-in that uses the XPS LEDs to display the results of a JUnit test run. It includes the C code described in this post. See http://code.google.com/p/eclipse-xps/

PS: Johannes, thanks again for relicensing the C source under Apache 2.0.

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Litrik De Roy — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:59:58 -0000

I have just started working on some Java code that plugs into Eclipse and uses xps_led_control.exe to use the LEDs to show the results of a JUnit test run. I plan to get rid of the exe and call the C-code directly through JNI later on. See http://litrik.blogspot.com/2006/12/dell-xps-led... for more details.

Re: Dell XPS Vanity Lights Blink!

Johannes Brodwall — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 09:05:15 -0000

Hi, Oz

I have been searching around, but I have not been able to find any similar programs. Sadly, the Winamp plugin is not hooked into the audio output, but into Winamp itself, so it is not usable.

But if you find out how to write a plug-in for a game, soundcard or similar in C, writing the actual XPS LED Light parts is very simple. See the attached C code and just call the setXpsColors(side_color, front_color, top_color, brightness) function.