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Solaar is a Linux device manager for Logitech's Unifying Receiver peripherals.
It comes in two flavours, command-line and GUI. Both are able to list the devices paired to a Unifying Receiver, show detailed info for each device, and also pair/unpair supported devices with the receiver.
Requirements
You should have a reasonably new kernel (3.2+), with the logitech-djreceiver
driver enabled and loaded; also, the udev package must be installed and the
daemon running. If you have a modern Linux distribution (2011+), you're most
likely good to go.
The command-line application (bin/solaar-cli) requires Python 2.7.3 or 3.2+
(either version should work), and the python-pyudev/python3-pyudev package.
The GUI application (bin/solaar) also requires Gtk3, and its GObject
Introspection bindings. The Debian/Ubuntu package names are
python-gi/python3-gi and gir1.2-gtk-3.0; if you're using another
distribution the required packages are most likely named something similar.
If the desktop notifications bindings are also installed (gir1.2-notify-0.7),
you will also get desktop notifications when devices come online/go offline.
Installation
Normally USB devices are not accessible for r/w by regular users, so you will need to do a one-time udev rule installation to allow access to the Logitech Unifying Receiver.
In the rules.d/ folder of Solaar you'll find a udev rule file, to be copied in
/etc/udev/rules.d/ (as the root user).
In its current form it makes the Unifying Receiver device available for r/w by
all users belonging to the plugdev system group (standard Debian/Ubuntu group
for pluggable devices). It may need changes, specific to your particular
system's configuration.
If in doubt, replacing GROUP="plugdev" with GROUP="<your username>" should just
work.
After you copy the file to /etc/udev/rules.d (and possibly modify it for your
system), run udevadm control --reload-rules as root for it to apply. Then
physically remove the Unifying Receiver, wait 10 seconds and re-insert it.
Supported Devices
Solaar will detect all devices paired with your Unifying Receiver, and at the very least display some basic information about them. Depending on the device, it may be able to read its battery status. Changing various settings of the devices (like mouse DPI) is currently not supported, but implementation is planned.
The K750 Solar Keyboard is also queried for its solar charge status. Pressing the Solar key on the keyboard will pop-up the application window and display the current lighting value, similar to Logitech's Solar app for Windows.
Extended support for other devices will be added in the future, depending on the documentation available, but the K750 keyboard is the only device I have and can test on right now.
Thanks
This project began as a third-hand clone of Noah K. Tilton's logitech-solar-k750 project on GitHub (no longer available). It was developed further thanks to the diggings in Logitech's HID++ protocol done by many other people:
- Julien Danjou, who also provided some internal Logitech documentation
- Lars-Dominik Braun
- Alexander Hofbauer
- Clach04