control mbp keyboard lights individually

[Mr_J]

hi crazy idea, i'd love to be able to individually control the brightness level of each of the lights on my mbp keyboard

so when i press any key it sends a ripple effect across my keyboard, from the key pressed

am guessing the keyboard lights are only white, so no colour to play with, unless i physically strip down my oldest working mbp and install led lights under each key!!) 

i'd love to be able to adjust the brightness of each key individually, up and down, from off to max, within isadora

to do this i've got to be able to access each key's light controller, which i suspect Apple have pretty well locked down

i've found some ways i can adjust all the key's brightness together using just the mouse but i've got to keep the mouse clicked down all the time

i know i can track the mbp trackpad position but is there a way i can send that to apple's system preferences/keyboard/keyboard brightness slider?

or maybe there's another hack?

cheers for any suggestions that'll make this idea work, Mr J

[Woland]

@mr_j

I can't find anything online about individual key control programmatically, but I did find this: https://github.com/pirate/mac-keyboard-brightness

If you're not dead-set on it being a MacBook Pro, you could probably find a rainbow LED gaming external keyboard where you can control each key's color and brightness programmatically.

I'd say the best way to do programmatic control for anything that requires scripting using Isadora would be to use the Pythoner plugin that's currently in beta (and for which we are looking for beta testers).

[Mr_J]

thanks @woland 

another route i could take (that works for m2 mbp) is to change presses of the F5 and F6 keys (currently Focus and Siri) to lower and raise the keyboard brightness instead, using this technique... any suggestions of how to send multiple F5 and F6 key strokes from Isadora? This would allow me to fade up and down with 16 steps

your recommendation only works with macs < 2015 but does allow setting the keyboard brightness from 0 and 100%, so in theory i can jump to a specific brightness without having to send multiple fade down/up (F5/F6) commands. If i don't make progress with the above F5/F6 solution then i'd be keen to beta test the Pythoner plugin on my 2013 mbp running macos sierra

rgds, Mr J

[Woland]

@mr_j said:

i'd be keen to beta test the Pythoner plugin on my 2013 mbp running macos sierra

 Feel free to send in a ticket using the link in my signature. It'd be the easiest way to send keystrokes using Isadora.