Device grouping

Devices land in zones through the Studio zone tree. Each device shows up as a card under the zone that owns it, with one-tap actions to add it, move it, hide its outputs, flash the hardware, or pull it back out. In a multi-zone scene you can go finer still and reassign individual outputs across zones. This page walks the whole flow.

The unit that actually moves between zones is an output, not a whole device. An output is one device output or addressable segment. A single-segment strip has one output; a multi-channel controller contributes several. A device output lives in exactly one zone’s layout at a time, so adding a device to a new zone moves its outputs there rather than copying them.

🔗The device card

Every physical device under a zone renders as a card in the zone tree. The card carries the device’s brand identity and its live state:

• A duotone accent strip down the left edge, tinted to the vendor’s brand colors.
• The vendor mark (or a device-class icon when there is no mark to carry the identity).
• The device name, then a meta line with the LED count, transport (USB, Network, SMBus, Bridge, MIDI, or Serial), and a driver label when there is no vendor mark.
• For a screen device, the card shows the real resolution (for example 2560 × 1440) instead of an LED count, because a screen’s layout is a pixel grid rather than addressable LEDs.

Clicking the card body selects that device’s zone and highlights its outputs on the Stage canvas. Hovering previews those outputs.

🔗Channels and outputs

A device with more than one channel expands into a per-channel breakdown beneath the card body. Each channel row shows:

• The channel’s topology shape (strip, ring, matrix) and its name.
• A live component badge when something is wired to that channel, naming the attached component or a count like 3 components. Hover the badge for the full per-component LED breakdown.
• The channel’s LED count.
• A per-output hide toggle, when that channel has a placed output in the current zone.

The card shows each channel’s effective name — your rename if you’ve set one, otherwise the device’s own channel name — never a raw slot id.

🔗Adding a device to a zone

Each zone in the tree ends with an Add device button. Click it to open a picker listing every device that is not already entirely in this zone. Each option shows where the device currently lives, for example Corsair LS100 (in Desk) or WLED strip (unassigned), so you can see what the move pulls from.

Picking a device brings every output it has into this zone:

• A device already placed in another zone is moved: its existing outputs are reassigned to the target zone.
• A device the scene has not placed at all is minted fresh, one output per channel, or a single output for a device with no channels. The daemon resets position and size on assign, so the device drops onto the zone’s canvas with sensible defaults.

In a single-zone scene, devices that sit in no zone fold under the sole LED zone as one-tap Available rows. Each Available card carries a green add (+) action that drops the device straight into the zone, no picker needed.

🔗Hide, identify, remove

Each placed device card carries a trailing action cluster:

Hide is a Studio view convenience, not a render change. Hidden state is client-side UI state keyed per scene and per zone, persisted in your browser. It hides the output’s box on the canvas so you can declutter a busy layout. It is not the daemon’s discovery-reconciliation memory, and hiding an output does not stop it rendering. Use the per-channel eye toggle to hide a single output, or the card’s hide-all toggle to move every output of the device in unison.

Identify flashes the device’s LEDs through the daemon so you can match the on-screen card to a physical light. It is available whenever the device is online. A brief toast confirms the flash.

Remove pulls every one of the device’s outputs out of this zone. For a multi-output controller the removals run in sequence as a single user action, so the whole device leaves the zone in one click. The device then becomes Unassigned (or Available, in a single-zone scene) and can be added to a different zone.

🔗Offline devices

A device that is placed in the layout but not currently connected renders as a muted, dashed row tagged Offline. It shows a friendly vendor word (Razer, Corsair, Philips Hue) rather than its raw backend id, which is never shown to you. An offline device can still be removed from the zone, but it cannot be identified, since there is no hardware to flash.

🔗Output-level assignment in multi-zone scenes

When a scene has more than one zone, a Zone assignment panel docks below the Stage canvas. This is the fine-grained tool: instead of moving a whole device, you select individual outputs and reassign them.

The panel lists every output grouped by its owning zone, and within a zone by physical device. A multi-channel controller can have its segments split across different zones: one fan ring in Desk, another in Shelf.

To reassign:

1. Click output chips to multi-select them. Selected chips highlight in the accent color.
2. The toolbar shows the selection count and an Assign to zone picker.
3. Pick a target zone. The selected outputs move there, and the selection clears.

Each output chip names its device, and a multi-channel device also names the segment (for example Lian Li · Front fans). Like the device picker, chips never show a raw id.

🔗Where devices go from here

Once a device is grouped into a zone, position it on the zone’s canvas in the layout builder, then stack effects and other inputs on the zone in the layer stack. For the full end-to-end path of splitting a rig across multiple zones, see the multi-zone walkthrough.

🔗Related pages

• Zones — create, color, and manage the partitions devices live in
• Scenes — the whole-rig configs that own your zones
• Layouts — arrange a zone’s device outputs spatially
• Finding devices — get hardware discovered before grouping it