Keypress detection.

[TheBytemaster]

Hello all!

I was looking for a solution to a question I had and wondered if any of you wonderful people could assist me.

I am wondering if it would be possible to simply determine when a user has pressed any key at all on a keyboard. I do not care about specific keys, but I want to know if such a thing would be possible to do without listening for every key on the keyboard, (which would be bad, because that would be like a keylogger, which is nothing at all like what I want, and is in fact against the rules of the forums as you probably already know), and how I might go about doing this. (I realize that there are some keys that are impossible to detect, such as the Fn key found on many laptops.)

So, to reiterate; I just want to know when any key at all is pressed. The key that is pressed isn't important at all. (In fact, a generic approach would be ideal to reduce complexity of the code.)

Thanks for your help!

[guinness]

I am sure there was some "anykey" in the WinAPI function, but can't think of it now.

[orbs]

hello TheBytemaster, and welcome to AutoIt and to the forum.

AutoIt has a function that will let you detect input for keyboard and mouse (and probably any other HID). look for:

_Timer_GetIdleTime()

but if it's only keyboard you are interested in, that a bit more complicated, i'll let the API/DLL gurus around take on it.

[guinness]

Well if you suggest that then there is _WinAPI_GetIdleTime().

[michaelslamet]

Something like this?

#include <WindowsConstants.au3>
 
GUIRegisterMsg($WM_KEYDOWN, "IsPressed")
 
; do anything here
 
Func IsPressed()
    MsgBox(4096, "Test", "Key is pressed!", 2)
EndFunc

[orbs]

 

Something like this?

#include <WindowsConstants.au3>
 
GUIRegisterMsg($WM_KEYDOWN, "IsPressed")
 
; do anything here
 
Func IsPressed()
    MsgBox(4096, "Test", "Key is pressed!", 2)
EndFunc

 

by MSDN: "Posted to the window with the keyboard focus". that's only for your GUI, so you can't detect keys sent to other windows with this method, right?

also, you'll have to register the WM_SYSKEYDOWN message, and still you'll probably miss some special keys.

[michaelslamet]

by MSDN: "Posted to the window with the keyboard focus". that's only for your GUI, so you can't detect keys sent to other windows with this method, right?

also, you'll have to register the WM_SYSKEYDOWN message, and still you'll probably miss some special keys.

 

Aha, correct!

This will only detect keys for our own GUI and will not detect special keys.

Why OP want to detect any keys on ANY GUIs while he state it's nothing to do with keylogger?

[bogQ]

@michaelslamet, as far as i can read hes trying to detect idle keyboard with no mouse, what does that have to do with keylogger?

Edited January 30, 2014 by bogQ

[orbs]

this seems a bit familiar to an issue i had in the past, only in reverse:

'?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

so venturing into gedankenexperiment territory, i'd check the idle time. but if idle time reports activity, i'd check also for mouse moves, and assume a key press only if mouse did not move.

anyway i think it's time to let the OP get the reins now.

[michaelslamet]

@michaelslamet, as far as i can read hes trying to detect idle keyboard with no mouse, what does that have to do with keylogger?

 

No? haha, my bad, Teacher

[TheBytemaster]

this seems a bit familiar to an issue i had in the past, only in reverse:

'?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

so venturing into gedankenexperiment territory, i'd check the idle time. but if idle time reports activity, i'd check also for mouse moves, and assume a key press only if mouse did not move.

anyway i think it's time to let the OP get the reins now.

Ah, thank you. I believe that will do nicely. Thanks so much for your help!

 

Something like this?

#include <WindowsConstants.au3>
 
GUIRegisterMsg($WM_KEYDOWN, "IsPressed")
 
; do anything here
 
Func IsPressed()
    MsgBox(4096, "Test", "Key is pressed!", 2)
EndFunc

That's not what I was looking for as the others have stated, but $WM_KEYDOWN seems useful, and I might just use that in a later project I was brainstorming. I'll have to remember that one. Thanks!

(I didn't reply earlier because for some reason I wasn't getting any alerts for responses to my thread. I was actually kind of sad that I hadn't gotten any responses as far as I could tell, and I was about to try and figure out if bumping was acceptable here. I promise I'm not normally lazy with responses when people are kind enough to be helping me.)

[Terenz]

This post from Melba is a good start:

Ignore the mouse movement for the idle time, if you add also the mouse keypress ( _IsPressed ) then you have only the keyboard activity...

[TheBytemaster]

This post from Melba is a good start:

Ignore the mouse movement for the idle time, if you add also the mouse keypress ( _IsPressed ) then you have only the keyboard activity...

So it is. I'm surprised I didn't see that earlier. Thanks.

[DavesNotHereMan]

From what I can tell, the _Timer_GetIdleTime function is reset when on wireless connection by the wireless connection itself. 

Is there a method to prevent  this from happening?

the following code closes IE or Edge after a set idle time.  It adds a countdown timer for a warning as well.  When on a wired network everything works as expected, however when moved to a wireless connection (windows 10 machine) the idle time appears to be reset.

 

Has anyone come across this issue? 

Any thoughts on how to get around it?

I was going to check the keyboard for a keystroke and then the mouse for movement however it appears from this thread that there isn't a method for determining any key stroke.  If there is a way to ignore the reset apparently coming from the wireless?

 

$timeLimit = Int(IniRead("config.ini","limit","time","Default Value"))
$cdTimer = Int(IniRead("config.ini","limit","cdtime","Default Value"))

 

 

local $miliseconds =  1000
local $countDownSeconds =  ($cdTimer  * $miliseconds)

local $fiveSeconds =  (5   * $miliseconds)

 

; time in miliseconds since an imput was registered on the system
Local $iIdleTime = _Timer_GetIdleTime()

while 1 ;run the script continuously in the background
 Sleep($fiveSeconds) ; used to reduce system drain
 $iIdleTime = _Timer_GetIdleTime()

  while $iIdleTime < $timeLimit

   Sleep($fiveSeconds) ; used to reduce system drain
   $iIdleTime = _Timer_GetIdleTime()
   if ($iIdleTime > $timeLimit - $countDownSeconds and ProcessExists("IEXPLORE.EXE") > 0) Or ($iIdleTime > $timeLimit - $countDownSeconds and ProcessExists("MicrosoftEdge.EXE") > 0) Then
    MESSAGE($countDownSeconds)
   EndIf
   $iIdleTime = _Timer_GetIdleTime()

  WEnd
 ; Clear all temp files in IE and close all instances of IE
 If ProcessExists("IEXPLORE.exe") > 0  then

 ; Clear IE history and all temporary files
  $ClearID = "255"
  RunWait("RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess " & $ClearID)

 ; Close all instamces of IE

  While ProcessExists("IEXPLORE.EXE") > 0
   RunWait('taskkill /F /IM "iexplore.exe"')
  WEnd

 EndIf

 ; close all instances of Edge

 If ProcessExists("MicrosoftEdge.exe") > 0  then

  While ProcessExists("MicrosoftEdge.exe") > 0
   RunWait('taskkill /F /IM "MicrosoftEdge.exe"')
  WEnd

 EndIf

 

WEnd

 

Func Message($countDownSeconds)
 $MsgBoxMiliSeconds = $countDownSeconds + 1000 ; Countdown timer length in miliseconds
 $timer = TimerInit()
 $lableText = "Your internet session will be end in           seconds."& @CRLF& @CRLF & "Move mouse to continue."

 GUICreate("Browser Close",350,60,-1,-1,-1,-1)
   $Lable = GUICtrlCreateLabel($lableText,10,10,330,200)
   ;$Input = GUICtrlCreateInput("", 140, 225, 75, 20, BitOr(0x001, 0x0800))
   $Input = GUICtrlCreateInput("", 175, 5, 25, 20, BitOr(0x001, 0x0800))
   GUISetState (@SW_SHOW)

 While (TimerDiff($timer)<$MsgBoxMiliSeconds)

   ; use the imput timer as exit for loop
   If (_Timer_GetIdleTime() < ($timeLimit - $thirtySeconds)) then

    ExitLoop
   EndIf
   ;set up for countdown timer on GUI
   $seconds = TimerDiff($timer)/1000
   $diff = $seconds - ($MsgBoxMiliSeconds/1000)
   $secondsRem = $diff * - 1

   $time = StringFormat("%02d",$secondsRem)

   GUICtrlSetData($input,$time)
 WEnd
  GUIDelete();    ; will return 1 (removes GUI from the screen
EndFunc