SteelSeries Apex 100 (wired) -- HID

Device: 1038:160E (SteelSeries Apex 100 Gaming Keyboard).

Reverse-engineered from direct hidraw probing and USB packet capture analysis on real hardware.

USB interfaces

The keyboard exposes three USB interfaces under USB configuration 1:

  • Interface 0 (Boot Keyboard): Standard 8-byte boot keyboard endpoint + 3-bit LED output report.

  • Interface 1 (Vendor Configuration): Vendor-defined HID collection (Usage Page 0xFFC0 / 0xFFC1). Carries 32-byte Output and Input reports used for all configuration commands.

  • Interface 2 (Consumer / NKRO): Consumer media keys (Report ID 1) and full key matrix reports (Report ID 2).

Hardware shortcuts

  • Windows / Meta Key Lock: Toggled directly in hardware on the keyboard by pressing Fn (SteelSeries Key) + Windows Key. When active, the Win Lock indicator LED on the keyboard lights up and the Windows key is suppressed at the controller level.

Command acknowledgement

Commands are written as 32-byte HID output reports to Interface 1 (/dev/hidrawN matching interface 1). Configuration writes are fire-and-forget; queries (such as firmware version query 0x10) return 32-byte responses on the interrupt IN endpoint.

Commands (32-byte output reports, interface 1)

0x04 0x00 -- Polling rate

0x04 0x00 <rate> [30 x 0x00]

  • 0x01 -- 1000 Hz

  • 0x02 -- 500 Hz

  • 0x03 -- 250 Hz

  • 0x04 -- 125 Hz

0x05 0x00 -- Illumination brightness

0x05 0x00 <brightness> [30 x 0x00]

Sets the blue LED backlight brightness. <brightness> is an integer percentage byte ranging from 0x00 (0% / LED off) to 0x64 (100% / maximum brightness).

0x07 0x00 -- Lighting effect

0x07 0x00 <effect> [30 x 0x00]

Configures the illumination animation mode and speed:

  • 0x01 -- Steady (static illumination)

  • 0x02 -- Breathing (slow speed)

  • 0x03 -- Breathing (medium speed)

  • 0x04 -- Breathing (fast speed)

0x09 0x00 -- Save to flash memory

0x09 0x00 [30 x 0x00]

Commits the current live polling rate, brightness level, and lighting effect to onboard flash memory so settings persist across power cycles.

0x10 0x00 -- Firmware version query

0x10 0x00 [30 x 0x00]

Returns a 32-byte report on the interrupt IN endpoint where the first byte indicates the firmware revision in BCD format (e.g. 0x41 for firmware 0.41).