The NZXT HUE 2 lighting system is a refresh of the original HUE+. The main improvement is the ability to mix Aer RGB 2 fans and HUE 2 lighting accessories (e.g. HUE 2 LED strip, HUE 2 Underglow, HUE 2 Cable Comb) in a channel. HUE+ devices, including the original Aer RGB fans, are also supported, but HUE 2 components cannot be mixed with HUE+ components in the same channel.
Each channel supports up to 6 accessories and a total of 40 LEDs, and the firmware exposes several color presets, most of them common to other NZXT products.
All configuration is done through USB, and persists as long as the device still gets power, even if the system has gone to Soft Off (S5) state. Most capabilities available at the hardware level are supported, but other features offered by CAM, like noise level optimization and presets based on CPU/GPU temperatures, have not been implemented.
The NZXT Smart Device V2 is a HUE 2 variant of the original Smart Device fan and LED controller, that ships with NZXT's cases released in mid-2019 including the H510 Elite, H510i, H710i, and H210i.
It provides two HUE 2 lighting channels and three independent fan channels with standard 4-pin connectors. Both PWM and DC fan control is supported, and the device automatically chooses the appropriate mode for each channel; the device also reports the state of each fan channel, as well as speed and duty (from 0% to 100%).
A microphone is still present onboard for noise level optimization through CAM and AI.
After powering on from Mechanical Off, or if there have been hardware changes, the device must first be initialized. Only then monitoring, proper fan control and all lighting effects will be available. The firmware version and the connected LED accessories are also reported during device initialization.
LED channels are numbered sequentially: `led1`, `led2`, (only HUE 2: `led3`, `led4`). Color modes can be set independently for each lighting channel, but the specified color mode will then apply to all devices daisy chained on that channel.
Colors are set in hexadecimal RGB, and each animation mode supports different number of colors. The animation speed can be customized with the `--speed <value>`, and five relative values are accepted by the device: `slowest`, `slower`, `normal`, `faster` and `fastest`.
