Plugin: Input Device

This plugin makes input devices (keyboard, mouse, gamepad, remote control...) available as entities using linux evdev.

Use cases

• Global Hotkeys
  • Running basic functions (server list, chat, ...) in background
  • No window have to be open or minimized
• Home Automation
  • Use a real keyboard (for example a wireless numpad keyboards) as interface to control flows
• Robotics
  • Control your robot with keys or a 3d mouse

Event Types

• Key (List)
  • Keyboard Key
  • Mouse Button
• Led (List)
  • Keyboard Led
• Relative Axis (List)
  • Mouse Position XY
  • Mouse Wheels
  • Volume Wheels on Keyboards
• Absolute Axis (List)
  • Joysticks
• Switch (List)
  • Lid shut
  • Microphone Jack inserted
  • Camera lens covered
  • Front proximity sensor active
  • Cover closed

Entity Instances

Entity instances represents a key/led/... and each can be addressed using a stable UUID (by device name and key/led/... id) or a stable human-readable label.

query getKeyStateF7 {
  instances {
    entities(label: "/org/inexor/input/any_device/key/key_f7") {
      label
      properties(name: "key_down") {
        value
      }
    }
  }
}

"Specific Device" and "Any Device"

Each event is forwarded twice:

This allows you to address a key/led/... event on a specific device or the key/led/... event on all devices.

Type System

Entity Types

Relation Types

Entity Behaviours

Relation Behaviours

Rust Crate / Rust Reference

• https://github.com/emberian/evdev/ (Linux only)
• https://www.freedesktop.org/software/libevdev/doc/latest/

Platform Compatibility

Repository

Appendix: Input Device Types

Keys

A key changed state. A key, or button, is usually a momentary switch (in the circuit sense). It has two states: down, or up. There are events for when keys are pressed (become down) and released (become up). There are also “key repeats”, where multiple events are sent while a key is down.

LEDs

An LED was toggled.

Relative Axes

Movement on a relative axis. There is no absolute coordinate frame, just the fact that there was a change of a certain amount of units. Used for things like mouse movement or scroll wheels.

Absolute Axes

Movement on an absolute axis. Used for things such as touch events and joysticks.

Switches

Change in a switch value. Switches are boolean conditions and usually correspond to a toggle switch of some kind in hardware.

Appendix: Shared Keys