enableReactiveLightModeKeychron.md

How to enable reactive lighting/ RGB modes on Keychron keyboards using cli on linux (tested on Keychron v4)

Step 1: Set up qmk environment

Go to: https://docs.qmk.fm/#/newbs_getting_started

Install the Prerequisites

On arch you can just do pacman -S qmk or yay -S qmk

Step 2: Clone Keychron qmk_firmware fork on the "playground" branch

Now DON'T run qmk setup, instead clone keychrons fork of the qmk_firmware:

git clone -b playground https://github.com/Keychron/qmk_firmware.git

do this in your home directory, so the qmk toolbox can find it.

Step 3: Set user keyboard and user keymap

Run these commands (change out the keyboard and keymap for yours of course):

qmk config user.keyboard=keychron/v4/ansi

qmk config user.keymap=yourkeymapname

what you have to put in the keyboard option you can find under qmk_firmware/keyboards/<here>

you can also run qmk list-keyboards

for the keymap you can just set qmk config user.keymap=default

or

qmk config user.keymap=via

we do this so we can run qmk flash later without passing flags, becasue for whatever reason I've ran into a problem where the keymap wouldn't be found by qmk on my machine

Step 4: Edit your keyboard's config.h file

Edit the qmk_firmware/keyboards/<your keyboard>/config.h

as an example this is the file I edited: qmk_firmware/keyboards/keychron/v4/config.h

Now in the config.h there should be a bunch of lines that look something like this:

...
// RGB Matrix Animation modes. Explicitly enabled
// For full list of effects, see:
// https://docs.qmk.fm/#/feature_rgb_matrix?id=rgb-matrix-effects
#define ENABLE_RGB_MATRIX_ALPHAS_MODS
#define ENABLE_RGB_MATRIX_GRADIENT_UP_DOWN
#define ENABLE_RGB_MATRIX_GRADIENT_LEFT_RIGHT
#define ENABLE_RGB_MATRIX_BREATHING
#define ENABLE_RGB_MATRIX_BAND_SAT
#define ENABLE_RGB_MATRIX_BAND_VAL
#define ENABLE_RGB_MATRIX_BAND_PINWHEEL_SAT
#define ENABLE_RGB_MATRIX_BAND_PINWHEEL_VAL
#define ENABLE_RGB_MATRIX_BAND_SPIRAL_SAT
#define ENABLE_RGB_MATRIX_BAND_SPIRAL_VAL
#define ENABLE_RGB_MATRIX_CYCLE_ALL
#define ENABLE_RGB_MATRIX_CYCLE_LEFT_RIGHT
...

// #define ENABLE_RGB_MATRIX_SOLID_REACTIVE
...

If not double check if you have the right file opened and the right repo cloned.

What you need to do now is comment out all the effects that you want to have, for example this one:

#define ENABLE_RGB_MATRIX_SOLID_REACTIVE

you should also make sure that these lines are commented out:

...
#define RGB_MATRIX_FRAMEBUFFER_EFFECTS
#define RGB_MATRIX_KEYPRESSES

Step 5: The keymap

You can of course set the default keymap as your environment's default, but if you haven't you should make sure that you have a rules.mk file in the keymap directory containing VIA_ENABLE = yes so you don't loose via functionality.

Step 4: Compile firmware

If you have set the defaults for your environment, you should just be able to run qmk compile this should create a binary in your qmk_firmware directory

you can also run

qmk compile -kb <keyboard> -km <keymap>

Step 5: Flashing the keyboard

Get a second keyboard or find some other way to run qmk flash without pressing enter on the keyboard you are flashing.

Now make sure that you have your current keymap config backed up somewhere, because it's gonna get overwritten.

1. Factory reset the keyboard (unsure if needed, do it to be safe)

press fn + J + Z for 4 Seconds

2. unplug cable

3. Remove the spacebar keycap, there should be a reset button underneeth on the left side

4. press and hold the reset button wile also plugging in the cable

After it's plugged in you can let go of the reset button. The keyboard now should be in DFU mode

5. Run qmk flash

or if you haven't set your keyboard and keymap in the qmk environment: qmk flash -kb <my_keyboard> -km <my_keymap>

I presonally ran into an issue here where it wasn't able to find the keymap, no matter what I did, but setting the environment worked

This will take a while

6. AAAaaaaaand now you should be done

You can now open via and re-import your .json keymap and everything should work. One problem I have is that via indexes the light modes wrong, so I just set RGBMode+ and RGBMode- keys to go through the modes that way. This is probably fixable though.