I work with a Dell XPS M1710. The laptop has lights in the lid, the side speakers, and the front speakers (3 sets of lights that can be individually adjusted) and a light under the mousepad. In the BIOS I can change the color of these lights, at least, each group. Also, I can turn a light on/off under the mousepad, I can't change it's color, just alternate if it's lit. The laptop came with a lot of software from Dell, but I've installed Windows 7 and lost all of their apps, including one that allowed me to change these light colors. Now that Dell's app is gone, I'm interested in making my own C# application to change the color of these 3 sets of lights (I don't particularly care to change the light under the mousepad, I like it off). How would I go about developing an app to retrieve and change these BIOS settings?
From what I've been able to find, this hackery is done in SMBIOS.
Looks like this developer figured it out -- he's written a Python GUI on Linux.
I read the source, and he's hooking to dellLEDCtl in libsmbios to do the dirty work. Here's the source, if you can stomach it. The git repo that Dell provided to the community for this stuff is here.
I don't think you're going to get this done completely managed.
We released an SDK for the community:
http://www.dell.com/html/global/xps/lightfx/index.html
(I can say "we" because I worked on it!!)
Offers an extensive library of functions for building custom effects using the XPS M1710 LED lights.
Allows you to build custom effects just by creating a text file with a few simple XML tags -- even if you are not an XML programmer.
Includes application programming interface (API) functions that allow you to program lighting effects directly into applications.
Highlights several sample effects to inspire you to new heights of creativity.