Grid Effects - T-Troll/alienfx-tools GitHub Wiki
About grid effects
Grid effects is a group of software light effects, operating not with lights only, but also using it position on grid. It's like "Global effect" on some RGB keyboards, but have flexible controls and can reflect some system events.
Each effect have trigger to start, position to start, type, and phase.
Then effect triggered, it's starting to change light colors from the trigger point according to direction, increasing it until "size" parameter reached, then stops.
Operating grid effects
At "Grid Effect" tab, selected zone, in general, define not the lights involved into effect, but it's borders on grid. So, create a zone covering all grid for full operation, or use one of the zones to limit effect area to the part of the grid.
Next, you should define trigger - the event which launch effect for this zone. Currently, available triggers are:
- Off - grid effect disabled for zone.
- Continues - grid effect always start at the beginning point of the zone (depend on its direction).
- Random - grid effect start at random point inside zone.
- Keyboard - grid effect start from the position of the light with the name same as pressed key.
- Event - grid effect start if one of monitoring event happened (see Event Monitoring tab).
- Haptics - grid effect start if one of zone haptics level between min and max values (see Haptics tab) (Not implemented yet).
Continues and Random triggers are always on, so effect start again after finished. Other triggers are one-time, so effect stop then finished.
For Keyboard trigger, light names should be the same as key name (please use caps letters, "A" right, "a" not), and common English other key names from the capital (f.e. "Space", "Esc").
Now effect type:
- Gradient - lights color are gradient from effect start point to effect phase point, rest of lights keep "from" color (now work as inverse "Wave", to be finished).
- Running light - phase point(s) have "to" color, the rest have "from" color.
- Wave - Lights across phase point have a gradient between "From" and "To" colors based on "Width" parameter.
The direction block is the same as "Gauge" block at "Colors" tab, it defines effect phase grow direction and type.
"Speed" is how fast an effect grows (change it phase).
"Size" is maximal effect size before stop.
"Width" defines how many positions around phase point will be involved into color change.
"Circle" check box enables effect rollback - so after reaching size defined by "Size", it is starting to decrease phase until reach initial state (Not implemented yet).
"Zone lights only" - in case this checkbox enabled, only lights including into zone will participate into effect, otherwise all lights defined by zone borders. Example: you have defined a zone with "WASD" lights. Without this check box, QWEASD lights will be involved, but only "WASD" if enabled (Not implemented yet).
Switching grid effects on and off
"Grid" effect is listed between "Effect mode" combo values at the right-top corner of the screen. So it can be switched using it, and assigned as profile default at "Profiles" tab as well.
Another limitations
- Yes, you can use more, than one grid effect at a time, assigned to different zones. But in case zones share the same lights, final color can be weird.
- No, you can't use more, than one grid in effect. Grid defined by first zone light.
- Grid effect provide massive light updates, so it loads hardware quite high. I'm working to decrease loading, but it will be anyway.