4 ms·

Reverse-Engineered Userspace Driver for Asus ZenVision Lid OLED on Linux"

60 points by berlianta 4mo ago

slipknotfan 4mo ago
A cool thing would be to put a progress bar for something on the lid screen so you can see how long is left and open up the laptop when it is finished.
- happyPersonR 4mo ago
  This might sound kinda campy… but I’d be totally down for something that makes it look like a toaster… haha
- dmitrygr 4mo ago
  Put a battery gauge on there, run MS teams, and watch it drain in realtime.
yjftsjthsd-h 4mo ago
If I'm reading correctly, this only uses generic support through the kernel (yay libusb), and actually implements all the interesting stuff in user space. If so, that's fantastic, because it means you don't need to patch the actual kernel, and that's really, really nice. I understand it's not always practical but I do wish as many drivers as were possible were at least initially supported like this, with kernel support later if we really wanted it.
userbinator 4mo ago
> CLAUDE.md Reverse-engineered and vibe-coded? I've been seeing a lot more projects like this recently; it seems getting an AI to do a lot of the work for you has lowered the barrier to entry.
- ghrl 4mo ago
  Yes, certainly. I've heard of people that let an agent run on one machine, point a USB Camera at the target and give the agent ssh access and something like imgsnap (cli webcam command) and then let it run autonomously. The agent can then try all sorts of things and also verify the results without asking the user. I think that's quite a good workflow, giving at least a basic feedback loop for work that can't be tested with just software.
  - fragmede 4mo ago
    For extra credit on top of the webcam, you can also add a Fingerbot, and a pi pico with either an Ethernet port or a second USB port, so the host machine can talk to the target device as if it was a keyboard, and then also hard power it off via holding the power button if the work wedges the machine.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4mo ago
      Surely it would be simpler+cheaper to use a smart plug to kill power, at least for devices without a battery (or where removing it is easy)
      - fragmede 4mo ago
        Sometimes you need to do a specific sequence of power button presses to reach certain states. Eg a laptop may have a specific power button press to perform a warm reboot (instead of a cold boot which you'd get by cutting power), which preserves the previous crash in RAM. This helps you figure out where/why it crashed, instead of having to guess.
- plantain 4mo ago
  AI is amazing at reverse engineering, especially if you can give it a live feedback loop.
- stefan_ 4mo ago
  It's fantastic for reverse engineering like this. You still need to point it at the right resources of course (USB captures, a vendor driver binary, firmware dumps etc). And of course this mini OLED is somewhat of a throwaway feature to begin with. And you need to be okay with the usual AI slop - like this sentence will make any kernel developer cringe: "It is not a DRM display — you don't get a /dev/fb" If you want it to exist in the Linux DRM subsystem, add a driver for it! It can be done easily for stupid USB framebuffer devices like this.
djfergus 4mo ago
For anyone else who was wondering what this looks like: https://fdn.gsmarena.com/imgroot/news/22/12/asus-zenbook-14x-oled-space-edition-review/inline/-1200w1/gsmarena_003.jpg https://fdn.gsmarena.com/imgroot/news/22/12/asus-zenbook-14x... https://fdn.gsmarena.com/imgroot/news/22/12/asus-zenbook-14x-oled-space-edition-review/inline/-1200w1/gsmarena_002.jpg https://fdn.gsmarena.com/imgroot/news/22/12/asus-zenbook-14x...
- yjftsjthsd-h 4mo ago
  Thanks, that was weirdly hard for me to search for

60 points by berlianta 4mo ago

A cool thing would be to put a progress bar for something on the lid screen so you can see how long is left and open up the laptop when it is finished.

happyPersonR 4mo ago
This might sound kinda campy… but I’d be totally down for something that makes it look like a toaster… haha
dmitrygr 4mo ago
Put a battery gauge on there, run MS teams, and watch it drain in realtime.

yjftsjthsd-h 4mo ago

If I'm reading correctly, this only uses generic support through the kernel (yay libusb), and actually implements all the interesting stuff in user space. If so, that's fantastic, because it means you don't need to patch the actual kernel, and that's really, really nice. I understand it's not always practical but I do wish as many drivers as were possible were at least initially supported like this, with kernel support later if we really wanted it.

userbinator 4mo ago

> CLAUDE.md Reverse-engineered and vibe-coded? I've been seeing a lot more projects like this recently; it seems getting an AI to do a lot of the work for you has lowered the barrier to entry.

ghrl 4mo ago
Yes, certainly. I've heard of people that let an agent run on one machine, point a USB Camera at the target and give the agent ssh access and something like imgsnap (cli webcam command) and then let it run autonomously. The agent can then try all sorts of things and also verify the results without asking the user. I think that's quite a good workflow, giving at least a basic feedback loop for work that can't be tested with just software.
- fragmede 4mo ago
  For extra credit on top of the webcam, you can also add a Fingerbot, and a pi pico with either an Ethernet port or a second USB port, so the host machine can talk to the target device as if it was a keyboard, and then also hard power it off via holding the power button if the work wedges the machine.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4mo ago
    Surely it would be simpler+cheaper to use a smart plug to kill power, at least for devices without a battery (or where removing it is easy)
    - fragmede 4mo ago
      Sometimes you need to do a specific sequence of power button presses to reach certain states. Eg a laptop may have a specific power button press to perform a warm reboot (instead of a cold boot which you'd get by cutting power), which preserves the previous crash in RAM. This helps you figure out where/why it crashed, instead of having to guess.
plantain 4mo ago
AI is amazing at reverse engineering, especially if you can give it a live feedback loop.
stefan_ 4mo ago
It's fantastic for reverse engineering like this. You still need to point it at the right resources of course (USB captures, a vendor driver binary, firmware dumps etc). And of course this mini OLED is somewhat of a throwaway feature to begin with. And you need to be okay with the usual AI slop - like this sentence will make any kernel developer cringe: "It is not a DRM display — you don't get a /dev/fb" If you want it to exist in the Linux DRM subsystem, add a driver for it! It can be done easily for stupid USB framebuffer devices like this.

djfergus 4mo ago

For anyone else who was wondering what this looks like: https://fdn.gsmarena.com/imgroot/news/22/12/asus-zenbook-14x-oled-space-edition-review/inline/-1200w1/gsmarena_003.jpg https://fdn.gsmarena.com/imgroot/news/22/12/asus-zenbook-14x... https://fdn.gsmarena.com/imgroot/news/22/12/asus-zenbook-14x-oled-space-edition-review/inline/-1200w1/gsmarena_002.jpg https://fdn.gsmarena.com/imgroot/news/22/12/asus-zenbook-14x...

yjftsjthsd-h 4mo ago
Thanks, that was weirdly hard for me to search for