I am looking for a general purpose PC foot switch for controlling the
"start of test" on one of our test stations running TestStand. Most PC
foot switches I have found connect in-stream with the keyboard (or via
USB) and simulate keystrokes. This is not what I am looking for. The
reason I can't use the keystroke versions is I may have a situation
where there are more than sequence executing at a time, each
displaying their own "start test" window on the screen. Under Windows,
only the active form can receive keystrokes, and only one window can
be active at a time, so if there are more than one "start test"
windows visible, there will be no way to get the keystrokes to non
active window unless the user
switches active windows using the mouse
or keyboard (which negates the utility of the footswitch).
I am looking for a more 'general purpose' foot switch, one that
connects via serial port or USB and allows me to write my own handling
routines. I may need to connect more than one footswitch to the
teststation, so that's why I'm interested in serial or USB. I could
then add code to each "start test" window to monitor a specific serial
port for pedal input. I don't mind having to write my own serial port
code to handle the I/O.
Has anyone here ever found/used such a general purpose serial or USB
foot switch for this purpose? Does anyone have any ideas where I
could find such a product?
---
Bob
