Aurora

Native macOS ambient lighting for Skydimo-compatible LED strips — circadian, screen sync & music sync, all switchable from your menu bar.

---

Aurora is an independent, native reimagining of the Skydimo desktop app for the people who want their bias lighting to be ambient automation: a flux-style circadian glow by day and night, faithful screen-edge sync for movies and games, audio-reactive lighting for music — and the one thing the original never had, mode switching right from the menu bar.

It drives the same USB-serial controllers as the official app (reverse-engineered for interoperability), runs as a lightweight menu-bar agent, and is built entirely in Swift 6 / SwiftUI.

✨ Modes

	Mode	What it does
🌅	Circadian	Color temperature tracks your local sun cycle (f.lux-style): cool by day, warm + dim at night. Auto / Day / Night override, a live 24-hour schedule graph with a time scrubber, and gamma-corrected warm tones so amber looks like amber.
🖥️	Screen Sync	Mirrors the colors at the edges of your screen onto the strip via ScreenCaptureKit. Regions: Full · Cinema (letterbox-aware) · Top · Bottom · Left · Right, plus a saturation control.
🎵	Music Sync	Audio-reactive lighting from your system audio (no virtual device): vDSP FFT spectrum → Spectrum · Pulse · Level (VU) · Mood, with sensitivity and beat detection.
🎨	Scene	A steady color across the strip — custom color picker + 12 presets.

Plus: a one-click menu-bar switcher, an installation-direction setup (matches however your strip is wound around the screen), launch-at-login, and a live on-screen preview.

🚀 Install

macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later · a Skydimo-compatible USB-serial controller.

Option A — download the app

1. Grab Aurora-vX.Y.Z-macos.zip from the latest release.
2. Unzip and move Aurora.app to /Applications.
3. First launch: right-click → Open (the build is ad-hoc signed, so Gatekeeper asks once).
4. For Screen Sync / Music Sync, grant Screen Recording in System Settings → Privacy & Security (Music Sync uses it for system audio), then quit and reopen Aurora.

Strip not detected, wrong colors, or mirrored effect? → Troubleshooting (most issues are the official Skydimo app holding the USB port, a missing permission, or the install direction).

Option B — build from source

git clone https://github.com/b0ver/aurora.git && cd aurora
swift build                                 # compile
swift run AuroraChecks                      # run the logic checks
./Scripts/package_app.sh release install    # build + install into /Applications

(Only the Swift toolchain is needed — full Xcode is not required.)

🔌 Hardware

Aurora talks to Skydimo USB-serial controllers (e.g. the SK01xx monitor light-strip family) over a CH340 bridge at 115200 baud. It auto-detects the controller, identifies the model and LED count via a handshake, and streams Ada-style frames. The protocol was reverse-engineered for interoperability — see docs/protocol/.

Tested on: SK0127 — Skydimo 27″ monitor strip, 65 LEDs (handshake, RGB channel order, all four modes, gamma, install direction). The 21/24/27/32/34″ 3- and 4-sided strips and the "A" series are auto-detected and expected to work. Full model matrix: docs/COMPATIBILITY.md · reports for other models welcome.

🧠 How it works

A small render engine runs a continuous background loop at a fixed FPS: the active mode produces a frame of per-LED colors, the engine applies brightness, and pushes it to the controller (and an on-screen preview).

 SwiftUI (MenuBarExtra + window)
        │  observes / commands
 LightEngine ── render loop ──► LEDController (USB-serial)
        ▲ frame providers
 Circadian · ScreenCapture · MusicFFT · Static
        └─────────── AuroraCore (RGB · Kelvin · LEDLayout) ──┘

Built as focused Swift modules: AuroraCore (color/Kelvin/layout math), AuroraDevice (serial protocol + auto-detect), AuroraCircadian (solar position → schedule), AuroraCapture (ScreenCaptureKit edge sampling), AuroraAudio (vDSP FFT), AuroraEngine (render loop), and AuroraApp (UI). See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.

🗺️ Roadmap

Done: circadian · screen sync · music sync · scene · menu-bar switcher · installation setup · launch-at-login. Next: gradients & saved scenes, time-based automation, global hotkeys, multi-monitor, and a notarized build. Full plan in docs/ROADMAP.md.

🤝 Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome — especially reports from other Skydimo controller models. The codebase is small, modular, and documented (PRD, architecture, and ADRs live in docs/).

⚖️ License & disclaimer

MIT. Aurora is an independent interoperability project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or built from Skydimo's source. "Skydimo" is used only to describe hardware compatibility.

_{If Aurora makes your desk glow nicer, consider leaving a ⭐.}