Kreo Hive 65 - RGB Control for Linux (with an audio visualizer!)

Control your Kreo Hive 65 keyboard's RGB from Linux, no Windows software needed. Set any color per key, paint gradients, and run an audio-reactive mode that turns the whole board into a live soundwave for whatever your PC happens to be playing. And when the sound stops, it quietly drifts into an ambient gradient on its own.

It works with the wired 65% keyboard that shows up on USB as 258a:010c "BY Tech Gaming Keyboard" (that's the Kreo Hive 65)

What you need

• Any modern Linux (Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, take your pick) with PipeWire or PulseAudio. Every mainstream distro from the last few years ships one of them.
• Python 3, which is already there on most distros. No pip packages to install.
• The keyboard plugged in with its USB cable, in wired mode. Bluetooth and the 2.4 GHz dongle won't cut it, since the RGB channel only exists over the cable.

Setup (one time, about 2 minutes)

1. Grab the files. Drop keyboardrgb.py and 60-keyboardrgb.rules into a folder, say ~/kbd-re, and open a terminal there.

2. Give yourself permission to talk to the keyboard. Out of the box Linux only lets root touch the keyboard's control channel. This installs a rule that basically says "whoever is sitting at this computer may control this specific keyboard". It's scoped to this one device and trivial to undo later (just delete the file):

sudo cp 60-keyboardrgb.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo udevadm control --reload

Now unplug the keyboard's USB cable and plug it back in so the rule takes effect.

The 60- at the front of the filename actually matters. udev applies the access tag in a step numbered 73, so the rule has to sort before it. Don't rename it to something like 99-whatever, or it'll silently do nothing.

3. Try it out:

python3 keyboardrgb.py color ff0000     # whole board red (Ctrl-C to stop)
python3 keyboardrgb.py rainbow          # rainbow across the keys
python3 keyboardrgb.py off              # everything off

If the board turned red, you're done. If you got Permission denied, jump to Troubleshooting below.

Heads up: color, rainbow, gradient, key, and wave keep running and hold their colors until you press Ctrl-C. That's deliberate. The keyboard snaps back to its own built-in lighting the moment the program stops, so the tool has to stay alive to hold your colors in place. If you'd rather set a color and have the command exit right away (from a startup script, say), add --once: python3 keyboardrgb.py color ff0000 --once.

Audio-reactive mode

Demo.Video.mp4

The order of effect is wave -> bars -> wave

python3 keyboardrgb.py audio

That's the whole thing. Play some music and the keyboard becomes a 16-column spectrum wave: bass on the left, treble on the right, rippling out from the middle row. It grabs whatever your system is outputting (Spotify, YouTube, games, anything at all), no matter whether it's headed to speakers or headphones. Press Ctrl-C to stop.

Effects (--effect)

Pick the visual style you want. They all react to your audio in real time:

Effect	Looks like	Reacts to
wave (default)	a spectrum that swells out from the home row	each column is one frequency band
bars	a classic equalizer — grows bottom-up by default; --direction picks the edge it grows from	column (or row) height tracks band loudness
split	bass glowing in from the left edge and treble from the right, fading to dark in the middle	the left half brightens with bass, the right half with treble, so beats push in from the sides
flow	a bass "waterfall" — the left column tracks the bass and each punch then travels across to the right	only the leftmost column samples the bass; that reading scrolls rightward every frame, so a beat enters at the left and glides to the right edge (speed set by --flow-speed)
vortex	a black hole, with a dark void in the middle and a color accretion ring swirling around it	the colors spin faster the louder it gets, each frequency lights its own slice of the ring, and bass swells the hole and shoves the ring outward so beats give it a pulse
ripple	concentric rings breathing out from the middle	bass hits push the rings outward, and overall loudness sets the brightness

python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect vortex
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect ripple
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect bars
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect split
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect flow

Bar direction (--direction)

bars grows bottom-up by default. --direction (only meaningful for bars) changes which edge the bars grow from. bottom/top are vertical (one band per column); left/right/sides are horizontal (one band per row).

--direction	The equalizer bars…
bottom (def.)	grow up from the bottom row
top	hang down from the top row
left	grow rightward from the left edge
right	grow leftward from the right edge
sides	grow inward from both edges and meet in the middle

python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect bars --direction top
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect bars --direction sides
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect bars --direction left --gain 1.5

Make it yours

These knobs work with every effect:

Option	What it does	Default
--mode colorful	a 4-color gradient (red, violet, cyan, amber) scrolling across the board	default
--mode single --color ff2000	just one color of your choosing
--gain 1.5	amplitude multiplier. Bigger number, wilder reaction. Try somewhere in 0.5 to 3	1.0
--smooth 2	smoothness multiplier. Bigger is silkier and slower, smaller is twitchy and snappy. Try 0.5 to 3	1.0
--scroll 0.3	how fast the gradient drifts across the keys, in cycles per second. 0 freezes it in place (vortex ignores this one, it spins on its own)	0.15
--radius 0.45	vortex only: size of the dark hole in the middle, from 0 to 1. Bigger means a wider void and the ring pushed further out	0.18
--flow-speed 5	flow only: how fast a bass punch travels left-to-right, in columns per second. Lower is a slower, more visible sweep	8.0
--fps 60	frames per second. The default 30 looks smooth and stays light on the CPU; push it up toward 60 (the board's ceiling) for silkier motion	30

About the default palette: it's #FF4242, #7C3AED, #06B6D4 and #EAB308, a soft red, violet, cyan and amber. They're deliberately more pastel than the harsh, full-saturation RGB the keyboard blasts on its own. Easier on the eyes, and honestly just nicer to look at. Miss the loud stuff? --mode single --color <hex> or the standalone rainbow command still hand you full-saturation colors.

A few examples:

python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect vortex --radius 0.4         # black hole, wider void
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect ripple --mode single --color 00ffcc
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --mode single --color 00ffcc --smooth 2
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect bars --gain 1.5 --smooth 0.6

Volume doesn't matter, by the way. The visualizer auto-levels to the music's own dynamics, and --gain scales on top of that.

--shape was the old name for --effect and it still works, so any older commands you've got lying around keep running fine.

When the music stops (--default)

You can leave the visualizer running all day and it won't just sit on a dead black board during the quiet stretches. After 3 seconds of silence it smoothly crossfades into an ambient, non-audio effect, and the instant sound comes back it fades right back to reacting. Both transitions are gentle, no jarring cuts.

Option	What it does	Default
--default gradient	the idle effect: gradient (the scrolling 4-color gradient), breathe (the whole board drifting through the palette), wave (a rolling brightness wave), or off (go dark)	gradient
--idle-gap 3	seconds of silence before it switches over	3
--silence-level 0.01	how quiet counts as "silence". Raise it if a noisy line keeps it awake, lower it if quiet passages trip it	0.004

python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --default breathe            # breathe softly when idle
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --default off --idle-gap 2   # just go dark after 2s of quiet

Other commands

python3 keyboardrgb.py key w ff0000 a ff0000 s ff0000 d ff0000   # light up WASD
python3 keyboardrgb.py gradient ff00ff 00ffff                    # left to right gradient
python3 keyboardrgb.py wave                                      # rainbow animation, forever
python3 keyboardrgb.py wave 30                                   # ...or just 30 seconds

All of these hold until Ctrl-C (add --once to set one frame and exit). wave runs forever unless you hand it a number of seconds.

Key names: letters and digits as printed, plus esc tab capslock lshift rshift lctrl rctrl lwin lalt ralt fn space enter backspace del home pgup pgdn up down left right minus equal lbracket rbracket backslash semicolon quote comma period slash.

Screen sync

Turn the keyboard into an ambient extension of your screen. It grabs your monitor, shrinks it to a blurry 144p, and paints that onto the keys — so the lighting glows with whatever colors are on screen (a bright game, a video, your wallpaper). It's a soft, low-res reflection, not a tiny display.

python3 keyboardrgb.py screen

By default it follows whichever monitor has focus and switches live as you move between them (on Hyprland). It's deliberately light: your display is captured with grim, and a single ffmpeg does the 144p downscale, blur, and squeeze down to the key grid, so Python barely does any work (a few hundred bytes per frame).

You'll need ffmpeg, plus grim on Wayland (both are one package away on every distro). On X11 it uses ffmpeg's x11grab instead and no grim is needed.

Knobs:

Flag	Does
--output NAME	pin one monitor instead of following focus (hyprctl monitors / wlr-randr lists names)
--no-follow	stop chasing focus; stay on the current (or --output) monitor
--saturation	punch the colors up (default 1.5); 1 = as-is
--gain	overall brightness (default 1.1)
--blur	blur radius in px at 144p (default 2, 0 = crisp-ish)
--smooth	temporal smoothing 0..0.95 (default 0.5; higher = calmer)
--raw	faithful colors — no saturation/gain/gamma, a literal mirror
--fps N	frame rate (default 24; drop it to shave CPU further)

python3 keyboardrgb.py screen --output HDMI-A-1        # pin the external monitor
python3 keyboardrgb.py screen --raw --smooth 0.7       # true colors, extra calm
python3 keyboardrgb.py screen --saturation 2 --gain 1.3 # vivid and bright

Fun commands to try

Copy-paste any of these. Press Ctrl-C to stop.

Audio-reactive (put some music on first)

# the black hole, wide dark void, extra punchy
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect vortex --radius 0.4 --gain 1.5

# neon black hole, hot-pink ring, single color instead of the gradient
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect vortex --mode single --color ff0055

# bass ripples breathing out from the center
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect ripple --gain 1.4 --smooth 1.5

# aggressive twitchy equalizer, snaps hard on every beat
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect bars --smooth 0.5 --gain 2

# dreamy chill wave, slow, silky, barely-drifting colors
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect wave --smooth 2.5 --scroll 0.05

# rave mode, fast gradient ripping across the keys
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --scroll 0.6 --gain 1.5

# cyberpunk cyan rings
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect ripple --mode single --color 00ffcc

# leave it on all day: reacts to music, breathes the gradient when it's quiet
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --default breathe

# party then chill: punchy bars that melt into a slow gradient after 3s of quiet
python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --effect bars --gain 1.8 --default gradient --idle-gap 3

Ambient (no music needed)

python3 keyboardrgb.py wave                     # endless flowing rainbow
python3 keyboardrgb.py gradient ff6a00 8a2be2   # sunset: orange to purple
python3 keyboardrgb.py gradient 001b8a 00ffd5   # deep ocean: navy to aqua
python3 keyboardrgb.py color 00ffaa             # solid neon mint
python3 keyboardrgb.py key w ff2200 a ff2200 s ff2200 d ff2200   # gamer WASD

The three knobs worth playing with

• --gain is intensity. 0.5 is subtle, 2 and up gets wild.
• --smooth is personality. Low (0.4) is twitchy and snappy; high (2.5) is liquid and dreamy.
• --scroll is how fast the gradient drifts. 0 freezes it, 0.6 is a full-on rave.

Mix them however you like with any --effect (wave, bars, split, flow, vortex, ripple) and --mode single --color <hex>. Start with the vortex; on a bass-heavy track it looks the best.

Web UI (optional)

There's also a little browser app under client/. Its real job is piping shader and canvas effects to the keyboard: it runs GPU shader components (React Bits backgrounds like Strands, Color Bends, Dark Veil, plus a built-in gradient lab), grabs each rendered frame off the <canvas>, downscales it to the 16x5 board, and streams it over a local WebSocket. The CLI above is all you need day to day; this is just for driving the board from arbitrary visuals. More on it in client/README.md.

Troubleshooting

Permission denied: /dev/hidrawX means the udev rule isn't active. Check that /etc/udev/rules.d/60-keyboardrgb.rules exists (with the 60- name!), run sudo udevadm control --reload, then unplug and replug the keyboard.

keyboard vendor interface not found means the keyboard isn't connected by USB cable, or it's in wireless mode. Flip it to wired. You can confirm Linux sees it with lsusb | grep 258a (or grep -r 258a /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/idVendor).

Audio mode runs but nothing moves? Sound is probably going to a different output than the one being monitored. List your outputs with pactl list short sources and pick the .monitor of the device you're actually listening on:

python3 keyboardrgb.py audio --source alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo.monitor

My colors vanished and the keyboard went back to its own lighting? The program stopped. These modes only persist while the tool is running, because the keyboard reasserts its built-in lighting the instant streaming stops. Keep the command running (it holds until Ctrl-C), or add it to your startup so it relaunches. To go back to the board's own effects on purpose, just stop the tool or hit your Fn lighting hotkey.

It says "keyboard dropped off the bus, reconnecting..."? The board's firmware reset and re-enumerated. The tool waits for it to come back (about a second) and carries on, so it's harmless. Usually the cause is two programs driving the keyboard at once (another keyboardrgb.py still running in a different terminal, for instance), so make sure only one is streaming. It can also just happen now and then on its own during long sessions.

Notes

• Your Fn-key lighting shortcuts still work and will override streamed colors; just rerun the tool to take control back.
• Everything runs in userspace over standard HID. No kernel modules, no firmware flashing, nothing persistent written to the keyboard.
• Curious how it works? The wire protocol was reverse-engineered from HID captures, and the full write-up is in PROTOCOL.md. Short version: one 520-byte USB "feature report" per frame carries an RGB triplet for every key, and the audio mode adds a pure-Python FFT that folds system audio into 16 frequency bands, one per keyboard column.
• Don't use keyboardrgb.py raw to experiment with report 0x05 unless you really know what you're doing. That's the door to the chip's firmware bootloader on this hardware family, and the wrong bytes could soft-brick the board.