Set the led of Wacom Intuos4 tablet on Linux

Published on 24 april 2011

Update 2020: Let me redirect you to the solution intuos4-oled by Sanette on Github. I use it on Kubuntu 19.10 for my Intuos4XL. The guide under doesn't work because it is from 2011 and code changed...

Wacom Intuos 4 run 'out-of-box' in Ubuntu and Linux Mint distro, but a lot of little things are still hard for end users: the LED display doesn't works out-of-the-box , and buttons can't be customised with a user interface. Here is the little how-to I get my tablet to work at 100%, I hope it will help beginners as this is the hardest part for digital painters starting on Linux : getting their tablet to work. I took time to write the terminals code to be the easier as possible.

Installation

All you will need is to copy and paste the lines of codes under into a terminal windows ( Ctrl + C here , and Ctrl + Maj + V in the terminal ). I advice you to do it line by line, and I hope everything will get installed "automagically" as I tryed to write it. I'm still a bash beginner, please report your problems on the comments. GNU C++ and the USB 1.0 and Magick++ libraries are needed to compile. Under Debian/Ubuntu/LinuxMint they are installed as follows: sudo apt-get install g++ libusb-1.0-0-dev libmagick++-dev We will create a directory "Script/" first to work on cd
mkdir Script
Then grab the source zip and unpack ( and clean ) wget http://www.davidrevoy.com/data/documents/Intuos4-LED.zip
unzip Intuos4-LED.zip -d ~/Script
rm Intuos4-LED.zip Then compile the sources by invoking make cd ~/Script/Intuos4-LED/src
make

First test :

You can perform a first tablet LED check: sudo ~/Script/Intuos4-LED/src/intuos4-led-check The test should work on Intuos4-M only , I can't said for other tablet ( S and L ) , the identificator seams to be hardcoded by the programmer.
The test do at first a gradient on the LED, then .... I let the surprise : have fun with this 'easter egg' of the programmer Christoph Karg ;)

Usage :

You can now use this program with a script combined with 'xsetwacom' to create your tablet configuration,
here is the script I use in my '~/ Script/Intuos4-LED/src' folder ) cd
wget http://www.davidrevoy.com/data/documents/my-init-intuos4-tablet.sh
mv my-init-intuos4-tablet.sh ~/Script/Intuos4-LED/src/my-init-intuos4-tablet.sh You have to config the script to your setup, preferences, path, as well as your tablet ID gedit ~/Script/Intuos4-LED/src/my-init-intuos4-tablet.sh script ledwacom overview If you don't know your tablet ID, paste this in a terminal : xinput --list | grep '[w|W]acom' My script call custom icons I created , feel free to create more yourself with Gimp and have fun ! cd wget http://www.davidrevoy.com/data/documents/Wacom-LED-icons.zip
unzip Wacom-LED-icons.zip -d ~/Script/Intuos4-LED/icons
rm Wacom-LED-icons.zip

A bit of more ergonomy to launch it :

When your script is ready ; I create here with a right click over my Mint Menu a new launcher ; easy to setup like the image under.
Like this I only have to click the icon at start-up. script ledwacom launcher script ledwacom desktop The cons of this script is it has to use super user privilege to run, and so asking a password ; but this is really fast and nothing compare to the pleasure of using the device properly.
Have fun and I hope you will had a good install ! More infos : you can find the original archive by the programmer Christoph Karg here : http://tinyurl.com/44bhqcw Update : The developper Christoph Karg himself visited and commented to give a fresher link to have the last update of his software , thanks ! : http://braindump.kargulus.de/?p=432