Interacting with AURA_SDK.dll through python using ctypes

Question

I'm trying to control my ASUS ROG Flare keyboard LED colors using python. I downloaded the Aura Software Developer Kit from the ASUS website. link here: https://www.asus.com/campaign/aura/us/SDK.php inside the kit there is a menu guide and a dll file called AURA_SDK.dll. The guide says that with the mentioned dll the keyboard can be controlled.

I'm using the ctypes python package and succeeded in loading the package, but when I'm calling the first function to obtain control on the keyboard the program fails because I don't fully understand the argument the function needs to run.

Documentation from the guide:

Code I am trying:

import ctypes
path_dll = 'AURA_SDK.dll'
dll = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary(path_dll)
res = dll.CreateClaymoreKeyboard() # fails here

Any ideas on how to create this argument?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

This should do it. A good habit to get into is always define .argtypes and .restype for the functions you call. This will make sure parameters are converted correctly between Python and C types, and provide better error checking to help catch doing something incorrectly.

There are also many pre-defined Windows types in wintypes so you don't have to guess what ctype-type to use for a parameter.

Also note that WINAPI is defined as __stdcall calling convention and should use WinDLL instead of CDLL for loading the DLL. On 64-bit systems there is no difference between standard C calling convention (__cdecl) and __stdcall, but it will matter if you are using 32-bit Python or desire portability to 32-bit Python.

import ctypes as ct
from ctypes import wintypes as w

dll = ct.WinDLL('./AURA_SDK')  # Use WinDLL for WINAPI calls.
dll.CreateClaymoreKeyboard.argtypes = ct.POINTER(ct.c_void_p), # tuple of arguments
dll.CreateClaymoreKeyboard.restype = w.DWORD

handle = ct.c_void_p()  # Make an instance to pass by reference and receive the handle.
res = dll.CreateClaymoreKeyboard(ct.byref(handle))
# res is non-zero on success