camless

A light replacement for NZXT CAM. It handles fan and pump curves, lighting and the Kraken LCD in two small exes, about 4 MB together, where CAM installs about 500 MB of Electron.

Project page: camless and KrakenDial, how they started, and how much CPU they use next to CAM.

Download camless-setup.exe · Windows 10 and 11, x64 · Linux, x64, not yet run on hardware

• Curves as in FanControl. A curve is a graph, a fixed duty, a mix of other curves or a trigger. It follows CPU, GPU or liquid temperature, load or power, with hysteresis and separate rise and fall times. Each fan adds its own offset and limits.
• Curves stored on the Kraken. When the Kraken can run a curve by itself, camless stores it there, so the pump keeps its curve if camless stops.
• Lighting. CAM's effects on the Kraken ring and on fans behind a Control Hub.
• The Kraken LCD. Liquid temperature, frames from your own program, or a web page made for CAM, such as KrakenDial.
• History. Liquid temperature, CPU and GPU temperatures, loads, power and fan speeds over the last 10 minutes up to 30 days, a chart for each. Drag across one to zoom in on a stretch of time or on its values.
• Games and FPS, experimental and off until you turn it on. A card for each game, with its cover from Steam's cache on your PC. Every session with its play time, average frame rate, 1 % low and temperatures, and charts of its frame rate and temperatures from half an hour before the game to half an hour after, to see the PC warm up and cool down. Steam, Epic and Xbox games are found on their own.
• AI assistants. camless mcp lets Claude or another MCP client read the sensors and set fan curves. A curve it sets must still speed the fans up when it gets hot.
• Profiles. Each one is a whole setup. Import from NZXT CAM makes one from what CAM is set to.
• A tray app. It updates itself from GitHub releases. Closing it never stops fan control.

Monitoring	Kraken curves
Lighting	LCD

Warning

camless sets your pump and fan speeds, and a bad curve can overheat your hardware. It comes with no warranty (sections 15 and 16 of the license). Two safeguards hold whatever the config says. While camless runs, liquid at 55 °C or above sends every fan and pump it manages to 100 %. The curve stored on a Kraken reaches 100 % at 55 °C liquid even when camless is not running. How it works has the details.

camless is not affiliated with or endorsed by NZXT. NZXT, CAM and Kraken are trademarks of NZXT, Inc.

Devices

Device	USB id	Tested on Windows	Tested by
Kraken Elite 2024 (Kraken Elite V2)	1e71:3012	pump and fan curves, lighting, LCD	@kleju13
Control Hub, the one in the H9 Flow RGB+	1e71:2022	fan duties, lighting	@kleju13
Kraken 2023 (Kraken Base)	1e71:300e	pump and fan curves, LCD on firmware 2.0.0	@dominixik, @Gold13821
Kraken Elite 2023	1e71:300c	pump and fan curves, LCD on firmware 2.1.0	@djinn2526
RGB & Fan Controller (3+6 channels)	1e71:2020	fan duties, lighting, on firmware 1.7.0	a user on Reddit, @Gold13821
RGB Controller (2023)	1e71:2021	lighting, on firmware 1.5.0	a user on Reddit
HUE 2 Ambient	1e71:2002	lighting, on firmware 2.6.0; not the ambient mode, which camless does not have	@Gold13821

These follow liquidctl, the Linux driver and Nexus, and nobody has run camless on them yet:

Device	USB id	What camless drives
Kraken Plus 2024	1e71:3014	pump and fan curves, lighting the cooler reports, LCD at the size it reports
Kraken Z3 (Z53, Z63, Z73)	1e71:3008	pump and fan curves, RGB header; the LCD shows only its own display
Kraken X3 (X53, X63, X73)	1e71:2007, 1e71:2014	pump curve, pump ring, logo and RGB header

Experimental: Nexus leaves these out, so the driver follows liquidctl and the Linux drivers alone, and the app marks them Experimental:

Device	USB id	What camless drives
Kraken X2 (X42, X52, X62, X72)	1e71:170e	pump and fan curves from firmware 3, pump ring and logo
Kraken M22	1e71:1715	pump ring and logo
Kraken X31, X41, X61 (and X40, X60)	2433:b200	pump and fan duties, logo; on Windows, needs WinUSB bound to it with Zadig
Smart Device (V1; H200i, H400i, H500i, H700i)	1e71:1714	duties and speeds on the three fan ports, the LED channel
Grid+ V3	1e71:1711	duties and speeds on the six fan ports
Smart Device V2 (H510 Elite, H510i, H710i, H210i)	1e71:2006, 200d, 200f	duties and speeds on the three fan ports, two LED channels
RGB & Fan Controller	1e71:2009, 200e, 2010	duties and speeds on the three fan ports, two LED channels
RGB & Fan Controller (3+6 channels)	1e71:2011, 2019, 201f	duties and speeds on the three fan ports; not the lighting, which liquidctl found changed (protocol notes)
HUE 2	1e71:2001	four LED channels
RGB Controller (2023)	1e71:2012	three LED channels

Other brands' fan hubs and LED controllers, off unless you turn on Settings → Devices → Other brands: camless never drives keyboards or mice, and leaves a hub alone while its brand's app runs (how it works). None of them has run with camless yet, so the app calls them experimental. Their lighting is off or one colour:

Device	USB id	What camless drives
Lian Li Uni Hub, SL, AL, SL-Infinity, SL v2, AL v2	0cf2:7750, 0cf2:a100 to a106	fan duties and speeds on the four ports, and each port's lighting
Lian Li Uni Fan TL controller	0416:7372	each TL fan's duty and speed, and each port's lighting
Lian Li Galahad II Trinity, Trinity Performance, LCD	0416:7373, 7371, 7395	the radiator fans' and the pump's duty and speed, and on the LCD the liquid temperature
Lian Li Strimer Plus V2	0cf2:a200	the 24-pin and 8-pin cables' lighting
Asiahorse Umbra V2	1a86:fe04	one duty for all its fans, and one colour on its ten ARGB ports
Nollie controllers, 1 to 32 channels	16 models under 3061, 16d2 and 16d5 (list)	each channel's lighting
Corsair iCUE LINK System Hub	1b1c:0c3f	duties and speeds of the LINK fans and pumps, their temperature probes, and each device's lighting
Corsair Commander Pro, Obsidian 1000D	1b1c:0c10, 1d00	the six fans' duties and speeds and the four temperature probes; on Linux only with the corsair-cpro kernel driver unloaded
HYTE Smart Hub	3402:0904	duties and speeds on the four fan headers, and the four ARGB ports
HYTE Nexus Portal NP50	3402:0901	the FP12 fans and the 4-pin header, and the lighting of each module and the logo
iBUYPOWER MiniHub	3402:0900	duties and speeds on the two fan ports, and the four ARGB ports

On Linux, camless also sets the motherboard's fan headers, experimental and off unless you turn on Settings → Devices → Motherboard fans: a CPU fan, case fans, or the pump of an AIO without software on a header. The BIOS keeps every header no curve takes, and gets each one back when camless stops (how it works). Windows needs the fan chip's registers, which camless does not drive yet.

camless also sets a graphics card's fans, experimental and off unless you turn on Settings → Devices → GPU fans: an NVIDIA card's on Windows, through NVIDIA's NVML, with the service running as administrator, and an AMD card's on Linux, through the amdgpu driver. The card's own curve keeps every fan no curve takes, and gets each one back when camless stops (how it works).

hardware/verified.toml lists the hardware camless was reported working on. With any other device camless drives, the app shows Unverified hardware in the sidebar, or Experimental hardware for the devices above. It works or Something is wrong there opens a GitHub issue with a hardware report filled in. Once you submit it there, I submitted it hides the prompt for that setup, and a works report adds the device to the list.

The app lists other NZXT devices as "no driver yet". If you have one, Settings → Devices → Create report opens a GitHub issue with what a driver needs filled in, and shows you all of it first. A driver is one Rust file, and CONTRIBUTING.md shows how to write one.

Install

Windows

1. Quit NZXT CAM, and turn it off in Task Manager → Startup apps so it does not come back at the next logon. While CAM's app runs, it holds the devices and camless cannot open them. CAM Service can keep running.
2. Run camless-setup.exe. It needs no administrator rights. It is not code-signed, so SmartScreen may stop it: More info → Run anyway. Or install from PowerShell, which also checks the download's SHA-256:

   irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kleju13/camless/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex
   

3. The setup adds camless to the Start menu and opens it. The app starts the service and asks Windows for administrator rights. Answer Yes, so the service can read CPU temperature. To be asked only once, turn on Settings → Service → Start as administrator without asking.
4. To bring over your CAM setup, use Profiles → Import from NZXT CAM.

The app checks for a new release each time it starts and shows Update available under the service in the sidebar. Update there, or in Settings → About, installs it. Uninstall camless from Settings → Apps in Windows. It keeps your settings in %APPDATA%\camless unless you choose to delete them.

CPU temperature also needs PawnIO and its signed module for your CPU in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\camless: IntelMSR.bin on Intel, AMDFamily17.bin on AMD Ryzen. Both are in the zip of the latest PawnIO.Modules release. Without them, curves on CPU temperature hold the failsafe duty. When they are missing, the app says so when it starts, with the file this CPU needs, and Settings → Software from elsewhere shows what camless found. CPU temperature starts within seconds of putting them in place. The Kraken's liquid temperature needs none of this, so new curves use it by default.

GPU temperature, load and power come from NVIDIA's driver (NVML) on an NVIDIA card. Any other card, such as AMD's or Intel's, gives the temperature and load that Task Manager shows, which Windows keeps for every card. An AMD card's power comes from AMD's driver (ADL), from the log the driver keeps, as LibreHardwareMonitor reads it, or else from a reading of the moment; an Intel card has none. If an AMD card shows no power, or power that jumps, camless report says which way it was read and what it read over the last minute.

Linux

Note

camless on Linux has not run on NZXT hardware yet. It has the same drivers as on Windows and reaches the devices through hidraw and usbfs, as liquidctl and Nexus do on Linux. Only the build, the install and the app with simulated devices were tested. It works or Something is wrong in the app tells us how it went.

It runs on x64 with glibc 2.34 or later and WebKitGTK 4.1: Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12 and later.

1. Download camless-linux-x86_64.tar.gz and its .sha256 from the releases. The first ones with it are betas. Then:

   sha256sum -c camless-linux-x86_64.tar.gz.sha256
   tar -xzf camless-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
   ./camless/install.sh
   

2. install.sh puts camless and camless-gui in ~/.local/bin, adds camless to your desktop's menu, and runs the service as a systemd user service that starts when you log in. It also installs udev rules, /etc/udev/rules.d/71-camless.rules. They let whoever is logged in at the computer open the devices camless drives, and no others. 72-camless-fans.rules gives you the motherboard's fan headers and an AMD card's fans, for Motherboard fans and GPU fans. They are the only part that needs root, so sudo asks for your password. If camless cannot open a device right after, plug it in again or restart.
3. The app needs WebKitGTK 4.1 and GTK 3 (libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0 on Debian and Ubuntu), and curl for updates. Its tray icon needs libayatana-appindicator3-1 (or libappindicator3-1) and a desktop that shows such icons: KDE Plasma does, and GNOME with the AppIndicator extension. Without one, closing the window quits the app, and the service keeps running.

What is different from Windows:

• No frame rates, which come from Windows' ETW. Games finds Steam games, native and under Proton. camless does not ask which window is in front (Wayland does not say), so a game counts as played while it runs.
• CPU temperature comes from hwmon (k10temp, zenpower or coretemp) and needs no PawnIO. CPU power comes from RAPL, which only root can read, so it has no reading.
• No admin rights: the service runs as you. Import from NZXT CAM is on Windows only, like CAM, and so are firmware updates, which camless never installs: CAM on Windows does.
• Kernel drivers such as nzxt-kraken3 can stay loaded, except corsair-cpro: camless leaves a Commander Pro alone while it is loaded (sudo modprobe -r corsair-cpro, and blacklist it to keep it out). Do not run another program that sets the same fans, such as CoolerControl, liquidctl or fancontrol. camless leaves the motherboard's headers alone while CoolerControl runs, but does not see fancontrol.
• Updates download the new tarball and run its install.sh. When the udev rules have changed, the desktop asks for your password (pkexec), or you run install.sh from the download.

To uninstall, run ~/.local/share/camless/uninstall.sh. It keeps your settings in ~/.config/camless.

Documentation

• Configuration: camless.toml, profiles, curve kinds and the command line.
• How it works: the service and the app, fan control and safeguards, history and games, AI assistants, web pages on the LCD, the local API, updates, and Linux.
• Protocol notes for each device.
• Contributing: building, testing and adding a device.

Not done yet

• Other NZXT devices: the H1 V2, the HUE 2 Motherboard, and lighting on the 3+6 channel RGB & Fan Controller 2011, 2019 and 201f.
• On Linux: frame rates, and a run on real hardware.
• Other brands: Lian Li's wireless controllers, lighting effects on their hubs, and a run on real hardware.

Credits

Most of what camless knows about NZXT devices comes from liquidctl: its drivers, issues and pull requests. The Linux nzxt-kraken3 and nzxt-smart2 drivers helped too, and so did Nexus for the Krakens camless has not run on. Frames for the Kraken LCD are Q565, by seritools. How CAM streams them to the Kraken Elite was worked out from captures of CAM. The protocol notes list the sources for each device. The history, the game sessions, the FPS counter and the MCP server were inspired by Nexus, which counts frames the same way.

License

Copyright (C) 2026 kleju13 and camless contributors.

GNU AGPL v3. Use it, change it and share it freely, at work too. If you pass on a changed version, or run one for other people over a network, you must publish its source under the same license.

The Archivo, Saira and Hanken Grotesk fonts in gui/ui are under the SIL Open Font License.