Aqua Computer teases farbwerk RGB LED controller

Throughout the last years Aqua Computer, a German-based water cooling manufacturer, got many requests for a LED controller and has invested a lot of time in developing an innovative LED controller. The result of this development is the "farbwerk".

The farbwerk is a RGB LED controller with four independent channels. Due to the high processing performance it is possible to display natural and smooth color transitions. The farbwerk offers 13-bit color resolution of 8192 steps per primary color. Because of the high resolution even color transitions with low brightness settings are almost continuously.

The device can be configured via USB with the aquasuite software and a Bluetooth enabled variant also allows to use a smartphone for example. Besides this four analog sensor ports allow automatic color changes by temperature (-40 °C to +100 °C), voltage (0 to 3.3V) or resistance (100 Ohm to 25kOhm). In this case, an USB connection is only necessary for setup and can be disconnected once the configuration is saved in the farbwerk.

The operation and function set new standards as well there are a number of different ways how each channel can be adjusted. The intuitive interface controls of the aquasuite software allow a precise selection of the color and adjustments for the intensity and brightness. Colors can be set manually or rotated automatically. In addition a brightness curve can be defined to add a pulsating effect.

The communication between the aquasuite and the tools HWiNFO, AIDA and Open Hardware Monitor allows to use many different system values to control the channels. For example, the CPU load, GPU temperature or even current download speed can be used to automatically adjust the colors.

Customers that already own an aquaero 5/6 fan controller will be able to use Aqua Computers aquabus interface to control each single channel (there are three per RGB channel, 12 in total).

The farbwerk is designed to control LEDs with a voltage between 0 and 24 V. When installed to a PC system, the power supply will be 12 V so the LEDs or strips must be designed to use this voltage. Outside the PC and with an appropriate power supply unit, it is also possible to use 24 V LEDs. The farbwerk provides up to 2.5A per single channel/color while the total load can be as much as 8 A (100 W at 12 V).

Instead of LEDs it is also possible to connect other devices such as fans. Generally the farbwerk channels can also be used as switching outputs with 2.5 A per channel to serve other purposes.

To support further development of software and apps Aqua Computer will publish a SDK for the USB, aquabus and Bluetooth communication. The already existing Android demo app will be provided with its source code.