ASUS Aura LED (USB-based) controllers

Driver API and source code available in liquidctl.driver.aura_led.

New in 1.10.0.

This driver supports ASUS Aura USB-based lighting controllers that appear in various ASUS Z490, Z590, and Z690 motherboards. These controllers operate in either (a) direct mode or (b) effect mode. Direct mode is employed by Aura Crate in Windows. It requires the application to send a continuous stream of commands to the controller in order to modulate lighting effects on each addressable LED. The other mode is effect mode in which the controller itself modulates lighting effects on each addressable LED. Effect mode requires the application to issue a single set of command codes to the controller in order to initiate the given effect. The controller continues to process that effect until the application sends a different command.

This driver employs the effect mode (fire and forget). The selected lighting mode remains in effect until it is explicitly changed. This means the selected lighting mode remains in effect (a) on cold boot, (b) on warm boot, (c) after wake-from-sleep.

The disadvantage, however, is the inability to set different lighting modes to different lighting channels. All channels remain synchronized.

There are three known variants of the Aura LED USB-based controller:

• Device 0x19AF: found in ASUS ProArt Z690-Creator WiFi
• Device 0x1939 ¹
• Device 0x18F3¹: found in ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Formula

Initialization

ASUS Aura LED controller does not need to be initialized before use. Initialization is optional.

# liquidctl initialize
ASUS Aura LED Controller
└── Firmware version    AULA3-AR32-0207

Status

The status function returns the number of ARGB and RGB channels detected by the controller. If the command is invoked with --debug flag, the entire reply from the controller will be displayed in groups of 6 bytes. This information has not been fully decoded, but is provided in the event that someone is able to decipher it.

On ASUS ProArt Z690-Creator WiFi the following is returned:

# liquidctl status
ASUS Aura LED Controller
├── ARGB channels: 2
└──  RGB channels: 1

To display the set of 6-byte status values, use --debug on the command line. The following will be returned:

# liquidctl --debug status
ASUS Aura LED Controller
├── ARGB channels: 2
├──  RGB channels: 1
├── Device Config: 1     0x1e, 0x9f, 0x02, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 2     0x78, 0x3c, 0x00, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 3     0x78, 0x3c, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 4     0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 5     0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x01, 0x03, 0x02
├── Device Config: 6     0x01, 0xf4, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 7     0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 8     0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 9     0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
└── Device Config: 10    0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00

On ASUS ROG Strix Z690-i Gaming WiFi (mini-ITX) the following is returned:

# liquidctl --debug status
ASUS Aura LED Controller
├── ARGB channels: 2
├──  RGB channels: 1
├── Device Config: 1     0x1e, 0x9f, 0x02, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 2     0x78, 0x3c, 0x00, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 3     0x78, 0x3c, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 4     0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 5     0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x01, 0x03, 0x02
├── Device Config: 6     0x01, 0xf4, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 7     0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 8     0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 9     0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
└── Device Config: 10    0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00

On some ASUS Z490 boards (controller ID 0x18F3) the following is returned:

# liquidctl --debug status
ASUS Aura LED Controller
├── ARGB channels: 1
├──  RGB channels: 1
├── Device Config: 1     0x1e, 0x9f, 0x01, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 2     0x78, 0x3c, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 3     0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 4     0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 5     0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x06, 0x07, 0x02
├── Device Config: 6     0x01, 0xf4, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 7     0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 8     0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
├── Device Config: 9     0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00
└── Device Config: 10    0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00

RGB lighting

The driver supports one 12V RGB channel named led1 and three 5V Addressable RGB channels named led2, led3, and led4. Because the driver uses effect mode, all channels are synchronized. It is not possible at this time to set different color modes to different channels (direct mode is used for that). Nevertheless, independent channel names are provided in case a future BIOS update provides more flexibility in effect mode.

# liquidctl set led1 color static af5a2f
# liquidctl set led2 color breathing 350017
# liquidctl set led3 color rainbow
# liquidctl set led4 color spectrum-cycle
# liquidctl set sync color gentle-transition

Colors can be specified in RGB, HSV or HSL (see Supported color specification formats), and each animation mode supports zero or one color.

Mode	Colors	Notes
off	None
static	One
breathing	One
flashing	One
spectrum_cycle	None
rainbow	None
spectrum_cycle_breathing	None
chase_fade	One
spectrum_cycle_chase_fade	None
chase	One
spectrum_cycle_chase	None
spectrum_cycle_wave	None
chase_rainbow_pulse	None
rainbow_flicker	None
gentle_transition	None	name given by us
wave_propagation	None	name given by us
wave_propagation_pause	None	name given by us
red_pulse	None	name given by us

In addition to these, it is also possible to use the sync pseudo-channel to apply a setting to all lighting channels.

Footnotes

1. Support for devices 0x1939 and 0x18F3 may not be sufficiently developed so users are asked to experiment and provide feedback. Wireshark USB traffic capture, in particular, will be very helpful. ↩ ↩²