Has anybody tried to capture keystrokes on a Pocket PC PDA?

[PCKOST]

I am looking for a way to capture the up, down, and side scrolling keystrokes on a PDA.

[Liz F]

Hello PCKOST,

Thank you for contacting National Instruments. The most direct approach to this, using the "Key Down" or "Key Up" event in an event structure PDA application, is not supported by the module because these events correspond to QWERTY keyboard inputs.

It is possible that you may be able to access a DLL or something like that on the PocketPC itself, that will return event keystroke signals to the LV PDA application. I searched around on the PPC website, however, and could not find anything that would do this.

I will make a suggestion to our R&D team regarding the PDA keystroke functionality, because it does seem that it would be a useful feature. Thank you for your input!

Liz F
National Instruments

[PCKOST]

Thanks Liz! Do you know which DLL to access, and what the hooks are?

[Liz F]

Hello,

I do not know off the top of my head which DLL to access, but I found some GREAT sites that talk about handling button press events on the PPC. Perhaps you could use these to develop your application?

Handling Hardware Keys Instructions and Example (Pocket PC Developer Network)


"Hotkey" ActiveX control that notifies programs when Hotkey pressed or released


How to create UI-less eVC DLL


I hope these help!

Liz F
National Instruments

[JR_A.]

If you want to capture the hardware buttons of the Pocket PC there is a shipping example named "input demo.vi" which can be found in the example finder under Toolset and Modules>>PDA>>Input and Output. This example uses external code to capture these events. You must include the input.lib when building it in LabVIEW and then must copy the input.dll to the Windows directory of the PPC. Those files can be found in the ..\LabVIEW 7.0\examples\PDA\input\ARMDbg directory. KB 33CARIQS: How To Call External Code in LabVIEW PDA for Pocket PC explains more about calling external code.

Regards,

JR A.