⌨️ RustKeyboard — MSI Keyboard RGB LED Controller

A lightweight, native RGB LED controller for MSI-based gaming laptops Built with Rust + Native Windows Win32 API — no bloated software needed.

Features • Screenshots • Installation • Compatibility • Building • Hotkey • FAQ

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🎯 The Problem

MSI gaming laptops (and MSI-based OEM brands like Game Garaj) ship with keyboard RGB backlighting, but:

• ❌ MSI Center / SteelSeries GG is bloated, uses 300+ MB RAM, and often fails to detect the keyboard
• ❌ The default lighting software doesn't support OEM/rebranded MSI laptops (Game Garaj, XPG, etc.)
• ❌ Keyboards sometimes get stuck in bootloader mode after sleep/hibernate — LEDs stop working entirely
• ❌ No simple way to quickly toggle lighting modes without opening a full application

✅ The Solution

RustKeyboard is a tiny (~11 MB), zero-dependency native app that:

• 🎨 Directly controls your keyboard LEDs via USB HID — no MSI Center needed
• 🔧 Automatically recovers keyboards stuck in bootloader mode (Artery MCU)
• ⌨️ Fn+F8 hotkey to cycle through hardware lighting modes instantly
• 🖥️ Runs silently in the system tray with 0% CPU usage when minimized
• 🌍 Supports English, German (Deutsch), and Turkish (Türkçe) interfaces

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✨ Features

🔴🟢🔵 Hardware Lighting Modes

Mode	Description
Off	All LEDs disabled
Static Single Color	Solid color across all zones
Breathing Wave	Smooth fade in/out
Single Flashing	Single blink pattern
Double Flashing	Double blink pattern
Multi-color Shift	Colors shift across zones
Rainbow	Full RGB spectrum sweep

🛠️ Other Features

• 7-zone color customization — pick any color for each keyboard zone
• System tray — minimize to tray, runs in background with 0% CPU usage
• Start on boot — optional Windows auto-start via Registry
• Bootloader recovery — auto-detect and wake up stuck keyboards
• Fn+F8 hotkey — cycle through all 7 hardware modes with a single keypress
• Multi-language UI — English 🇬🇧, Deutsch 🇩🇪, Türkçe 🇹🇷

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🖥️ Compatibility

Developed & Tested On

Component	Details
Laptop	Game Garaj Slayer XL (MSI OEM)
Motherboard	MSI MS-17L2
BIOS	E17L2IE2.103 (2021-07-22)
CPU	Intel Core i7-11800H @ 2.30GHz (11th Gen Tiger Lake)
GPU	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop + Intel UHD Graphics
RAM	40 GB DDR4
OS	Windows 11 Pro
Keyboard MCU	Artery AT32 (VID: 0x2E3C, Bootloader PID: 0xAF01)

Compatible MSI Keyboard Models

This tool communicates with MSI keyboards via USB HID using:

• Vendor ID: 0x1462 (Micro-Star International)
• Product IDs: 5474, 5475, 5476

It should work with any MSI laptop keyboard that uses these HID identifiers, including:

Brand	Series	Notes
MSI	GE, GF, GP, GS, GT series	Steelseries per-key RGB keyboards
Game Garaj	Slayer series	Turkish MSI OEM brand
XPG / ADATA	Xenia series	Some MSI-based models

Note

If your MSI laptop's keyboard uses different PIDs, you can check with a USB HID tool and open an issue to add support.

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📦 Installation

Pre-built Binary

1. Download rustkeyboard.exe from the Releases page
2. Place it in C:\rustkeyboard\ (or any folder)
3. Run rustkeyboard.exe
4. (Optional) Enable "Start on Boot" in the Options panel

From Source

See Building from Source below.

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⌨️ Hotkey

Key	Action
Fn + F8	Cycle through hardware lighting modes: Off → Static → Breathing → Single Flash → Double Flash → Multi-color → Rainbow → Off → ...

Tip

The hotkey works globally — even when the app is minimized to the system tray. It saves the new mode to config automatically.

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🏗️ Building from Source

Prerequisites

• Rust (2024 edition)
• Windows 10/11 (x86_64)

Build

git clone https://github.com/mahirgul/rustkeyboard.git
cd rustkeyboard
cargo build --release

The compiled binary will be at target\release\rustkeyboard.exe.

Deploy

# Using the included deploy script:
deploy.bat

This builds in release mode and copies the exe to the project root.

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📁 Project Structure

rustkeyboard/
├── src/
│   ├── main.rs          # Entry point, registers window class and starts loops
│   ├── window.rs        # Native Win32 window (controls, custom drawing, events)
│   ├── i18n.rs          # Localization (EN/DE/TR translations)
│   ├── hid.rs           # USB HID communication with MSI keyboards
│   ├── hook.rs          # Global keyboard hook (Fn+F8 mode cycling)
│   ├── tray.rs          # Windows system tray icon + context menu
│   ├── config.rs        # JSON config persistence
│   ├── startup.rs       # Windows Registry auto-start management
│   └── globals.rs       # Cross-thread shared state (atomics/mutexes)
├── config.json          # User configuration (auto-generated)
├── icon.ico             # System tray icon
├── wresources.rc        # Windows resource file (icon embedding)
├── build.rs             # Build script (embed-resource)
├── deploy.bat           # Build & deploy helper
├── Cargo.toml           # Rust dependencies
└── README.md            # This file

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🔧 Configuration

Settings are stored in config.json next to the executable:

{
  "mode": 6,
  "speed": 2,
  "brightness": 10,
  "colors": [[255,255,255], [255,0,0], [255,165,0], [255,255,0], [0,255,0], [0,255,255], [255,0,255]],
  "close_to_tray": true,
  "start_in_tray": true,
  "language": "en"
}

Field	Type	Description
mode	0-6	Hardware effect mode
speed	0-2	Hardware effect speed (Slow/Medium/Fast) [config-only]
brightness	0-10	LED brightness level [config-only]
colors	[R,G,B]×7	7 RGB color zones
close_to_tray	bool	Minimize to tray instead of closing
start_in_tray	bool	Start minimized to system tray [config-only]
language	"en"/"de"/"tr"	UI language

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❓ FAQ

Q: My keyboard LEDs stopped working after sleep/hibernate!

Click "⚡ Force Wake Up" in the Actions panel. The app will send a recovery command to the Artery bootloader MCU.

Q: The app says "Not Found" for keyboard status.

Make sure no other software (MSI Center, SteelSeries GG) is holding the HID device open. Close them and click "🔄 Refresh".

Q: Does this work with per-key RGB?

Currently this controls keyboard-wide (zone-based) lighting, not individual per-key colors. Per-key support may be added in the future.

Q: Can I add my own MSI keyboard PID?

Yes! Open src/hid.rs and add your PID to the MSI_PIDS array. You can find your keyboard's PID using USBDeview or Device Manager.

Q: How does the background CPU usage remain at 0%?

The application is built entirely using the native Win32 API, eliminating GUI framework overhead. When minimized to the system tray, the window is hidden (SW_HIDE), and standard Win32 message loop processing handles the system tray events, guaranteeing 0% CPU consumption.

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📋 Dependencies

Crate	Version	Purpose
hidapi	2.6.2	USB HID communication
serde + serde_json	1.0	JSON config serialization
windows-sys	0.52.0	Win32 API (hooks, tray, window management)
rand	0.9	Randomness
embed-resource	2.5	Build-time icon embedding

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

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Made with ❤️ and 🦀 Rust

If this tool helped you, please ⭐ star the repo!