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Virtual Keypress (Read 2637 times)
rlj2104
Virtual Keypress
Dec 18th, 2008, 7:28pm  
It is pretty straightforward to recognize an actual keypress with Processing, but is it possible to tell Processing to press a key?  I.E. I want certain events to turn on capslock, num lock, and scroll lock.

Specifically, I'm trying to make a simple switch, and can't wait for an arduino to come in the mail, so I was thinking I could use the led's in the keyboard as controllers (suggested here:  http://www.instructables.com/id/Control-Electrical-Stuff-with-your-compu ter/).  I'm a newbie...so any suggestions would be much appreciated, especially for a less roundabout way of doing this.
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sw01
Re: Virtual Keypress
Reply #1 - Dec 18th, 2008, 8:09pm  
I tried this:

Code:

import java.awt.Toolkit;
import java.awt.event.KeyEvent;

Toolkit t = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();


Boolean b = t.getLockingKeyState(KeyEvent.VK_CAPS_LOCK);


println(b);


t.setLockingKeyState(KeyEvent.VK_CAPS_LOCK, false);
t.setLockingKeyState(KeyEvent.VK_NUM_LOCK, true);


This will produce:

Code:


false


Exception in thread "Animation Thread" java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException: Toolkit.setLockingKeyState
at java.awt.Toolkit.setLockingKeyState(Toolkit.java:1334)
at sketch_dec18b.setup(sketch_dec18b.java:32)
at processing.core.PApplet.handleDraw(PApplet.java:1383)
at processing.core.PApplet.run(PApplet.java:1311)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:613)



so, it can read the state, but can't use set statement for some reason.  This isn't limited to Processing (tried it outside of PApplet as well).


Anyone know how to get around this?
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seltar
Re: Virtual Keypress
Reply #2 - Dec 18th, 2008, 8:35pm  
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/awt/Robot.html

the Robot class has functions for controlling keyboard and mouse-manipulation

-seltar
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I'm bored, therefore I program
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seltar
Re: Virtual Keypress
Reply #3 - Dec 18th, 2008, 8:42pm  
and since i was bored
Code:

final int CAPS_LOCK = 20;
final int NUM_LOCK = 144;
final int SCROLL_LOCK = 145;


Robot r;
void setup()
{
  size(100,100);
  try{
    r = new Robot();
  }catch(AWTException a){}
}

void draw()
{
  int v = (int)random(3);
  switch(v){
    case 0:
	r.keyPress(CAPS_LOCK);
	r.keyRelease(CAPS_LOCK);
	break;
    case 1:
	r.keyPress(NUM_LOCK);
	r.keyRelease(NUM_LOCK);
	break;
    case 2:
	r.keyPress(SCROLL_LOCK);
	r.keyRelease(SCROLL_LOCK);
	break;
  }
}
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I'm bored, therefore I program
http://seltar.org  > seltar's special place
http://snippet.seltar.org > seltar's snippet palace
http://libraries.seltar.org > seltar's libraries
WWW  
sw01
Re: Virtual Keypress
Reply #4 - Dec 18th, 2008, 8:58pm  
Good to know!
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rlj2104
Re: Virtual Keypress
Reply #5 - Dec 18th, 2008, 9:53pm  
Wow.  Thanks for the fast responses, very much appreciated.
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