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LED'oh!

LED'oh!

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A graphical LED color controller for TrimUI Brick, Brick Hammer, and Smart Pro running NextUI.

Features

  • Visual device view — Front and back representations of your device with LED zones in their physical positions
  • 2D HSL color picker — Full-screen color field with crosshair cursor and live hardware preview
  • Per-zone settings — Brightness, effect type, and animation speed for each LED zone
  • Real-time feedback — Physical LEDs update instantly as you pick colors and adjust settings
  • LEDs Off/On toggle — Turn all LEDs off with a single button press; toggle back on to resume your previous state (static colors or running animation)
  • Per-LED animations — 18 animated LED patterns using per-LED frame control (11 Brick, 7 Smart Pro)
  • Persistent animations — Animations survive app exit and device reboots
  • Multi-device support — Automatically detects Brick, Brick Hammer, or Smart Pro and adapts the UI
  • Random front images — Device view randomly picks from available front image variants on each view flip (app start for Smart Pro)
  • NextUI compatible — Reads and writes the same settings file as the built-in LED control

LED Zones

TrimUI Brick / Brick Hammer

Zone View Description
FN1 Key Front Left function key LED
FN2 Key Front Right function key LED
Top Bar Back LED strip along the top edge
L/R Triggers Back Left and right trigger LEDs

Note: FN1 and FN2 share a brightness path — changing one changes the other.

TrimUI Smart Pro

Zone View Description
Joystick L Front Left joystick ring LED
Logo Front Triangle logo indicator LED
Joystick R Front Right joystick ring LED

Note: All Smart Pro zones share a single brightness path — changing brightness on any zone changes all of them.

Screenshots
Brick Front Brick Back Smart Pro
Brick — Front Brick — Back Smart Pro
Color Picker Zone Settings Menu
Color Picker Zone Settings Menu

Controls

Device View

Button Action
D-pad L/R Select zone (front view)
D-pad U/D Select zone (back view, Brick only)
L1/R1 Switch front/back view (Brick only)
A Open color picker for selected zone
Y Menu (zone settings, animations, about)
Menu Toggle LEDs off/on
B Save and quit

Color Picker

Button Action
D-pad (8-direction) Move cursor to pick color
L1/R1 + D-pad Fast cursor movement
A Confirm color
B Cancel (restore original color)

Zone Settings (via Y → Menu)

Button Action
D-pad U/D Move between settings rows
D-pad L/R Adjust value
L1/R1 + L/R Fast adjust
A Confirm
B Cancel (restore original values)

Animations

Per-LED animation patterns that drive individually addressable LEDs via the frame_hex framebuffer. The app automatically discovers and shows only the animations that match your device. Animations run as background daemons that persist after the app exits and automatically restart on reboot.

Select animations from Y → Menu → Animations. While an animation is running, editing zone colors will pause the animation and resume it when you're done.

Animations are discovered dynamically from the scripts/ folder inside the pak directory. Each script declares its target platform via a # PLATFORM: header. You can add your own — see Creating Custom Animations below.

Brick Animations (14 LEDs)

Animation Description
Aurora Slow-drifting greens, teals, and purples
Binary Binary counter in LEDs
Campfire Flickering warm firelight
Comet Bright head with fading tail
EKG Heartbeat pulse sweep
K.I.T.T. Classic Knight Rider red sweep
Kessel Run Stars streak outward from center to lightspeed
Morse Blinks "NEXTUI" in Morse code
Ocean Rolling blue-green waves
Police Red and blue alternating flash
Pride Rainbow flag color chase

Smart Pro Animations (23 LEDs)

Animation Description
Breathe All LEDs pulse warm orange together
Fill Rings fill up from bottom, then drain back down
Helix Two colored dots chase each other around each ring
Pulse Alternating ring pulses — left brightens, then right
Radar Bright head with fading tail sweeping each ring
Rainbow 8-color rainbow slowly rotating around rings
Spin Counter-rotating dots on left and right rings

Creating Custom Animations

Drop any .sh file into the scripts/ folder inside the LED'oh! pak directory and it will automatically appear in the Animations menu. No recompilation needed.

Location: Tools/tg5040/LED'oh!.pak/scripts/

Requirements:

  1. The script must be a POSIX shell script (starts with #!/bin/sh)
  2. Add a # NAME: Your Animation Name line in the first 10 lines to set the display name (otherwise the filename is used)
  3. Add a # PLATFORM: brick or # PLATFORM: smartpro line to target the correct device (defaults to brick if omitted)
  4. The script must write all LED positions in every frame to avoid stale colors bleeding through
  5. Use PID file management so the app can detect and stop your animation

Brick LED positions in frame_hex (14 LEDs, space-separated hex colors):

Position:  1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10   11   12   13   14
Zone:      |---------- Top Bar (8) ----------|  F2   F1   |-- L Trig --|-- R Trig --|

Smart Pro LED positions in frame_hex (23 LEDs, space-separated hex colors):

Position:  1      2-12                  13-23
Zone:      Logo   |-- Left Ring (11) --|-- Right Ring (11) --|

Note: The Smart Pro logo LED uses GRB byte order instead of RGB.

All positions must be written in every frame, even if unused (set unused positions to 000000).

Template:

#!/bin/sh
# NAME: My Animation
# PLATFORM: brick
# Description of what it does
#
# Daemon-ready: writes PID to /tmp/led_anim.pid for external management

F="/sys/class/led_anim/frame_hex"
E="/sys/class/led_anim/effect_enable"
PIDFILE="/tmp/led_anim.pid"
SPEED=0.10  # seconds between frames

# --- PID management (required) ---
if [ -f "$PIDFILE" ]; then
    OLD_PID=$(cat "$PIDFILE")
    if [ -n "$OLD_PID" ] && kill -0 "$OLD_PID" 2>/dev/null; then
        kill "$OLD_PID" 2>/dev/null
        sleep 0.5
    fi
    rm -f "$PIDFILE"
fi
echo $$ > "$PIDFILE"

# --- Setup (required) ---
# Set brightness for each zone (0-100)
echo 80 > /sys/class/led_anim/max_scale          # Top bar
echo 50 > /sys/class/led_anim/max_scale_f1f2     # FN1/FN2 buttons
echo 50 > /sys/class/led_anim/max_scale_lr       # L/R triggers
# Clear the effect system so frame_hex has full control
echo "000000 " > /sys/class/led_anim/effect_rgb_hex_m
echo "000000 " > /sys/class/led_anim/effect_rgb_hex_f1
echo "000000 " > /sys/class/led_anim/effect_rgb_hex_f2
echo "000000 " > /sys/class/led_anim/effect_rgb_hex_lr
echo 0 > /sys/class/led_anim/effect_m
echo 0 > /sys/class/led_anim/effect_f1
echo 0 > /sys/class/led_anim/effect_f2
echo 0 > /sys/class/led_anim/effect_lr
echo 0 > "$E"
sleep 0.3

# --- Cleanup on exit (required) ---
cleanup() {
    rm -f "$PIDFILE"
    echo 1 > "$E"
    echo 4 > /sys/class/led_anim/effect_m
    echo -1 > /sys/class/led_anim/effect_cycles_m
    echo 50 > /sys/class/led_anim/max_scale
    echo 50 > /sys/class/led_anim/max_scale_f1f2
    echo 50 > /sys/class/led_anim/max_scale_lr
    exit 0
}
trap cleanup INT TERM HUP

# --- Write one frame (required) ---
write_frame() {
    echo "$1 " > "$F"
    sleep $SPEED
    echo 1 > "$E"
    echo 0 > "$E"
}

# --- Your animation loop ---
while true; do
    # Build your frame as 14 space-separated 6-digit hex colors (RRGGBB)
    # Top bar (8) + F2 + F1 + TL + TL2 + TR2 + TR
    write_frame "FF0000 00FF00 0000FF FF0000 00FF00 0000FF FF0000 00FF00 000000 000000 000000 000000 000000 000000"
done

Tips:

  • Colors are 6-digit hex (RRGGBB): FF0000 = red, 00FF00 = green, 000000 = off
  • SPEED controls frame timing — lower is faster (0.08 = fast, 0.20 = slow)
  • Use shell arithmetic for patterns: $(( step % 8 )) for cycling
  • The write_frame function handles the effect_enable toggle that flushes frame data to hardware
  • Set max_scale to 0 for zones you want completely off (overrides any color)

Installation

NextUI Pak Store

LED'oh! is available in the NextUI Pak Store. Install it directly from the store on your device.

Manual Install

  1. Download the latest release zip from Releases
  2. Extract to your SD card — the LED'oh!.pak folder goes in Tools/tg5040/
  3. Launch from the Tools menu in NextUI

Supported Devices

  • TrimUI Brick
  • TrimUI Brick Hammer
  • TrimUI Smart Pro

Building

Requires Docker and the NextUI tg5040 toolchain image.

make build      # Build via Docker
make package    # Build + create distribution zip
make clean      # Remove build artifacts

The binary is cross-compiled using the ghcr.io/loveretro/tg5040-toolchain Docker image. No local cross-compiler setup required.

Hardware Research

See trimui_brick_led_research.md for per-LED framebuffer findings on the TrimUI Brick (14 individually addressable LEDs via frame_hex). The Smart Pro uses the same frame_hex interface with 23 LEDs: 1 logo + 11 left ring + 11 right ring.

Credits

License

MIT — see LICENSE

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LED color controller with live preview for NextUI on TrimUI devices

Topics

trimui retro-handheld trimui-smart-pro trimui-brick

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Releases 6

v0.7.0 Latest
May 16, 2026
+ 5 releases

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