DIY LabVIEW Crew Documents
Introduction
Anyone with small children knows how inquisitive they can be. They see Mummy or Daddy sitting at the computer banging away on the keyboard and moving the mouse around.
It looks like so much fun that they want to have a go. The only problem is that they jump on when your not looking and start clicking and pressing buttons randomly until they've deleted/modified important files etc. Even worse, they decide that pressing that big button right at their height would be fun... you know, the one marked "Power" or "Reset".
So to keep my little ones amused (and away from the power button) I wrote this vi. It has educational value too. The keys they press are displayed and spoken (albeit by a dodgy windows speech engine).
What does it do?
Keeps the baby amused while protecting your files / computer from accidental deletion.
How?
It maximises itself and then attemps to stay as the topmost window and keep focus by cupturing and dealing with all key presses and mouse movements.
It maximises itself and then attemps to stay as the topmost window and keep focus by cupturing and dealing with all key presses and mouse movements.
When the baby/toddler hits keys on the keyboard it displays the text of the button pressed and uses Windows XPs inbuild speech engine to 'speak' what key was pressed.
When the mouse is moved, bip noises are generated changing tone depending on location on the screen.
When the mouse is moved, bip noises are generated changing tone depending on location on the screen.
To make it even more interesting for the munchkin the front panel background is a picture that is painted with large colored dots as they move the mouse around. The color painted depends on the last key pressed.
Additional Notes
It hasn't had extensive testing yet but it looks promising. It relies on quite a few Windows specific things like user32.dll speech engine activeX controls etc.
I want to eventually add a few other things to it. Like different sounds when they click the mouse buttons, maybe pictures on the sides they can click that make noises etc.
This will do for now though.
Bug Report: My 2.5 year old discovered a bug during her beta testing last night. I haven't captured the mouse right click event. I'll have to look into that in the next version.
Version 0.2 A couple of bugs fixed. Mouse clicks captured. Multiple key presses flushed from queue. User event replaced with queue. Don't wait for mouse move sound to finish.
Anyone who finds this app useful or interesting is most welcome to make changes / improvements / suggestions.
Screenshot as requested
Very nice work. Someone (I'll get to it someday) should add some motion like the rain drop VI example, when the mouse button is clicked.
