ReferenceConsole

Register Broker — Reference Console

A first-party, non-admin desktop client that drives the Register Broker over its two well-known pipes. It is a transparent instrument that talks the broker wire protocol directly — nothing sits between the broker and the truth — and a clean, end-to-end demonstration of everything the framework exposes (sensors and full RGB control) from an ordinary user-mode process, without elevation. It is the project's reference consumer and its proof that the broker model is functional, safe, and effective.

Stack: .NET 10 + Avalonia 12 (cross-platform UI). The broker it connects to is Windows-only, so the connection target is Windows even though the UI framework isn't.

Layout

Project	What it is
Broker.Client/	Portable, dependency-free port of the broker wire format: 4-byte BE length + UTF-8 JSON frames, hello/ok identity handshake, scoped {token,op} requests. Owns RgbColor and the typed ops (SensorReadAllAsync, RgbListAsync, RgbSetLedsAsync, …). Pipe I/O is serialized so streamed effect frames never interleave with manual sends.
ReferenceConsole/	The Avalonia app. One window, three tabs. Effects/ holds the client-side effect engine.
ReferenceConsole.slnx	Solution (new XML format; .NET 10 default).
global.json	Pins the .NET 10 SDK (10.0.301) for this tree. The broker also targets .NET 10.

Build & run

# .NET 10 SDK required (runtime alone is not enough). Installed via:
#   winget install Microsoft.DotNet.SDK.10
cd "C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\VSC\Register Broker\Test_GUI\ReferenceConsole"
dotnet build -c Debug
.\ReferenceConsole\bin\Debug\net10.0\ReferenceConsole.exe

Click Connect. The console opens two sessions: SensorBroker (scope sensors:read) and BrokerControl (scope rgb:write). The peer-identity/signature gate is audit-only by default, so the unsigned console connects; if RequireAuthorizedClient is ever turned on, this exe's Authenticode signer would need to be pinned.

Tabs

• Sensors — sensor.readall grid, live-poll toggle with adjustable interval, in-place row updates (no flicker), per-read latency. The count reflects the available-and-usable set (the live readall size): removable sensors (e.g. an Aquacomputer controller) drop cleanly from the count when unplugged, pinned cards show "—" when their sensor is absent, and GPU cards are tinted by vendor. New groups like gpu.voltage and aqua.* surface automatically — no console change needed for a new sensor.
• RGB — the effect engine (below).
• Diagnostics — ping/latency, granted scopes, raw log.

The effect engine (RGB tab)

The broker already serves per-LED frames: rgb.set accepts a colors:[RRGGBB,…] array routed to IRgbController.SetLeds. So every effect is a client-side renderer that fills a per-LED buffer each frame; the engine streams it through that existing op. No broker or driver change is involved — the broker stays a pure transport.

EffectEngine runs a background loop while connected. Each device can be assigned its own effect and toggled with Drive this device; the loop renders every enabled device per tick, dedupes unchanged frames (rate-limit friendly), refreshes the sensor cache every 0.75 s (for the Temperature effect), and starts/stops audio capture automatically. Apply to all devices clones the current effect (same type, same parameter values, independent per-device state) onto every device and drives them together; Stop all disables them. Global FPS is adjustable (default 20 — safe under the control service's 120/240 ops/s limit).

Effects

Effect	Demonstrates	Key live parameters
Static	whole-device colour	colour
Temperature	colour-by-sensor (auto-enables Sensors live poll)	sensor picker, cold/hot temps, cold/hot colours, brightness
Rainbow	animation	speed, spread, saturation, brightness
Breathing	animation	colour, Hz, min/max brightness
Comet	per-LED chase animation	colour, background, speed, tail
Twinkle	random per-LED sparkles igniting and fading over a background	background, twinkle colour, density, fade, random-colours
Aurora	an original effect — drifting curtains of light blended from three palette colours	speed, wave scale, brightness, colours A/B/C
Manual per-LED	click LEDs to paint individually	brush colour (+ Fill / Clear)
Audio Spectrum	WASAPI loopback → FFT bands	reactive factor, smoothing, noise floor, low/high colour, Spectrum/Level mode

Fully-configurable parameters

Every effect declares a typed EffectParam list (Slider / Color / Toggle / Choice). The UI builds the controls generically (BuildParamControl), so any knob is adjustable live with zero per-effect UI code — including the audio reactive factor and smoothing. Adding a parameter to an effect is a one-line change in that effect; the UI picks it up.

Adding an effect

1. Implement IEffect in Effects/BuiltinEffects.cs (declare params in the ctor, fill the LED buffer in Render).
2. Add its name to EffectNames and a case in CreateEffect (both in MainWindow.axaml.cs).

Dependencies / notes

• NAudio 2.2.1 (console only) — WASAPI loopback capture for the audio mode. Windows-only, but loopback is non-admin, so the whole console stays non-admin. The FFT is hand-rolled (no extra FFT dependency). Audio mode only lights while the system is actually playing sound.
• Broker.Client has no third-party dependencies.
• MSI mb.argb0 per-LED goes through the broker's already-validated SetLeds path.