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[on:]

I've written a simple script where I press a button, which in turn Serial.prints a keystroke. My next step is to use that to activate a keyboard shortcut...a combination of two keys pressed simultaneously.

So I'm wondering two things:

1. Is it possible to Serial.print something that's not a character, like Ctrl, Shift, or Command?

2. If so, can you Serial.print two keys at the same time, perhaps with a delay(1000) after Serial.printing the first key?

Or would you guys suggest a better way to go about this?

[Reply #1 on:]

http://arduino.cc/en/Serial/Write

send the ascii code

[Reply #2 on:]

We did this in the "days of DOS". Take the interpreted key code character. There is a DOS service call that returns the scan code for non-printable keys...
if thats any help to get you started.

[Reply #3 on:]

What you're looking for is to turn your arduino into a USB keyboard. You can do it with an uno, but it's much easier with an arduino leonardo (google it in either case)

[Reply #4 on:]

Hm, well then a follow-up: how would I get it to "press" a special key, like F6? On a friend's advice, I tried

Code:

Serial.print("key_f6");

, but looking at the serial monitor, I think it's just printing key_f6 as a string.

[Reply #5 on:]

What WizenedEE said (did you see his message?) 

With Uno you would need v-usb or equivalent.  Leonardo or Teensy --> very easy.

[Reply #6 on:]

With Uno you would need v-usb or equivalent.

Looks like I'm s.o.l. with my UNO then. As far as I can tell, I'd need to download a DFU Programmer first. I can't do that without installing MacPorts, and I can't install MacPorts without Xcode, and I can't install Xcode 4 (the only one Mac makes available now) on Mac 10.6.

Grr.

Any other thoughts? All I want to do is have Arduino send a signal to launch a script that plays a particular song (in iTunes, Quicktime, whatever application I can). I was thinking I could do it with a button: press the button, which signals a keyboard shortcut, which launches a script to play the song. So it looks like that approach is out, at least with my UNO/O.S. combination.

Is there a whole different angle I could take?

[Reply #7 on:]

I'm not so sure that you're SOL, but I'm getting out of my zone here-- I have used Teensy for things like that, it's dirt simple and it has usb dongle-like format...

[Reply #8 on:]

With Uno you would need v-usb or equivalent.

Any other thoughts? All I want to do is have Arduino send a signal to launch a script that plays a particular song (in iTunes, Quicktime, whatever application I can). I was thinking I could do it with a button: press the button, which signals a keyboard shortcut, which launches a script to play the song. So it looks like that approach is out, at least with my UNO/O.S. combination.

Is there a whole different angle I could take?

Are you simply doing this as an intellectual exercise or just because you're bored ?  Seems like an awful lot of work just to play a music download. I would just buy an old laptop and get a illegal COUGH ! real copy of Windoze or whatever and use that.

[Reply #9 on:]

F6 is ASCII 246 decimal, 11110110 binary. Try writing that.

http://www.ascii-code.com/

[Reply #10 on:]

Are you simply doing this as an intellectual exercise or just because you're bored ?  Seems like an awful lot of work just to play a music download. I would just buy an old laptop and get a illegal COUGH ! real copy of Windoze or whatever and use that.

lol. Isn't everything an intellectual exercise?  I'm doing a silly project to learn about pairing a sensor and a computer, beyond the basic serial monitoring. I have a waterproof thermometer, and when it senses a pot of water has reached 100 deg. Celsius (that the water is boiling) I want it to tell the UNO to tell the computer to play an .mp3 clip of a James Brown yell.

[Reply #11 on:]

F6 is ASCII 246 decimal, 11110110 binary. Try writing that.

http://www.ascii-code.com/

That's still basically a character, as opposed to the function key F6. Someone might have mentioned it up-thread or I saw it somewhere else today, but I've learned you can't print function keys, Crtl, Shift, etc. in the programming sense. At least not without turning my Arduino into a USB keyboard, per WizenedEE's reply and stuff I've read elsewhere.

[Reply #12 on:]

So you tried and it didn't work. Because we all know that all PC programs work the same...

[Reply #13 on:]

So you tried and it didn't work. Because we all know that all PC programs work the same...

Sorry?

[Reply #14 on:]

F6 is ASCII 246 decimal, 11110110 binary. Try writing that.

http://www.ascii-code.com/

The serial monitor reads from the serial port and displays the character on a java TextBox. You can't generate a system-event, such as the one pressing F6 does, by displaying a character on a textbox.