Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

parallax · Sep 14, 2002, 02:48 PM

Anyone know how to do this to a USB keyboard in OS X (programmatically of course)?

IamBob · Sep 16, 2002, 11:30 PM

I doubt the keyboard would let you. Why would it? If that makes sense..

You might be able to find something in the keyboard drivers...? For some reason I doubt there are setXXX type methods/functions for something like that.

00101001 · Sep 17, 2002, 12:12 AM

Of course there are functions... I checked apple's site -- they've got a bunch of info on the ADB Manager, but that does you no good... I think what you're looking for is in the HID Manager -- searching for that *kinda* returned some code that did something to the hardware of the keyboard -- but I have no clue what I'm talking about.

do a search on developer.apple.com for USB Manager and HID Manager...

parallax · Sep 17, 2002, 12:53 PM

Originally posted by IamBob:
I doubt the keyboard would let you. Why would it? If that makes sense..

You might be able to find something in the keyboard drivers...? For some reason I doubt there are setXXX type methods/functions for something like that.

I'm pretty sure it was easy in OS 9. In Linux you can just make an ioctl call on /dev/tty.

IamBob · Sep 18, 2002, 01:56 PM

Seriously?..

That seems really strange to me. The only LEDs on my keyboard are caps and num lock. I'm not sure I'd want "someone else" to use them..

Oh well(back on-topic..), best of luck on figuring it out!

parallax · Sep 18, 2002, 07:49 PM

Originally posted by IamBob:
Seriously?..

That seems really strange to me. The only LEDs on my keyboard are caps and num lock. I'm not sure I'd want "someone else" to use them..

Oh well(back on-topic..), best of luck on figuring it out!

Thanks. ;o)

I have a scroll lock as well, and I've heard of people writing programs to use them as indicators for little things, e.g. network activity.

IamBob · Sep 18, 2002, 08:57 PM

Ok, the geek in me can admit it...that would be cool!

Evinyatar · Sep 19, 2002, 04:53 AM

I've done this in MacOS 9 where it was really easy. I think that with the HID Manager you'd just toggle a few flags, kinda like how you'd make force feedback work with gamepads/joysticks.

Glennfield · Sep 20, 2002, 11:25 PM

Bonus points to whoever can make it so that the Num Lock light doesn't toggle when I hit Clear while running the Calculator.

Gul Banana · Sep 21, 2002, 09:31 AM

Have a look in IOKit.framework - it includes all the HID stuff. I'm not experienced enough with the IOKit to do it myself, I'm afraid.

00101001 · Sep 21, 2002, 02:54 PM

hmmm....
/System/Library/Frameworks/IOKit.framework/Versions/A/Headers/usb/USBSpec.h defines

enum {
kUSBCapsLockKey = 0x39,
kUSBNumLockKey = 0x53,
kUSBScrollLockKey = 0x47
};

still looking for what the hell you can do with this though...

IamBob · Sep 21, 2002, 09:28 PM

Has anyone gone looking through the IORegistryExplorer?

I wouldn't know what to look for but there seems to be much info buried in there.