The scenario is the following:
When my active Widget is a QSpinBox, I can change the value by clicking or holding a click on an arrow of the box or by pressing or holding Page Up/Page Down/ ▲ / ▼ .
The problem is, that i have some hardware communications on valueChanged() which needs some milliseconds.
While i permascroll (mouse) or hold the click on a boxes arrow, this isn't a problem, because the scroll seems to be slower here (acceleration off), but when i use my keyboard (acceleration also off), the scrollspeed is much faster which causes the timing problem. The application slows down, then freezes for some seconds until the event queue is finished.
I need to allow using the keyboard input (including holding the keyboard key), so I'd like to know if there is a way to slow down key repeat rate of arrow/page up/down.
Actually I'm triggering a 200 msec oneshot timer on value changed, which passes the spinbox value on timeout. The timer will only be triggered if it's not running. That means when i change the value it will always have a 200 msec delay and the update frequency can only be 5 updates/sec or slower. It actually works, but I'd really like to improve this by reducing the key repeat rate somehow.
Ok no I see problem. Here problem is keyboard repaying character on button hold.
To overcome this without direct interaction with keyboard, I would try use event filter, observe key press events and reject some of them if then are arriving to fast.
Your device communication subsystem has two states: busy and available. When it's busy, you should schedule an update of a particular variable in your target, but don't execute it just yet. When the previous communications are done, and the subsystem is available, it should pick up any outstanding changes and propagate them.
I need to determine if the user is idle in this particular way.
For complicated reasons i cant use functions like GetCursorPos or any mouse related thing. Also i cant use LowLevelKeyboardProc with all the hooking and the GetMessage / TranslateMessage / DispachMessage loop running in the main function. These two options are off my choices, not for my decision.
GetLastInputInfo seemed perfect, but it cant filter only keyboard events, by default it detects both mouse and keyboard events.
Is there a simliar funcion that i can use for detecting only keyboard events?
i dont need and i dont want to know which keys are pressed, all i need to know is if the user pressed any of the keys. I will then loop and check that every half second until it returns false, then its done.
A better way would be to have in return the last time a keyboard event occurred. like GetLastInputInfo does. :(
This is hard to explain, and those are not excuses, i must avoid using hooks, and just detect if a keyboard event occurred.
Thanks for any help.
I have a transparent window (WS_EX_TRANSPARENT) floating topmost.
Whenever there is a mouse move (anywhere on the screen) or keyboard stroke, it needs to display the related info (e.g. mouse position).
Is it possible to capture mouse/keyboard activities without using a global hook? Anti-virus software almost always triggers false alarms for the use of global
hooks.
Any idea greatly appreciated.
I guess, GetAsyncKeyState and GetCursorPos might help. You probably can have a thread calling these functions every 300-500 msec, and posting a message to your main thread.
You could register for receiving raw input messages via RegisterRawInputDevices. Have a look over here, there are some links in the accepted answer of RRUZ, one points to a C# implementation. This works with window messages, no hooks involved.
(With this method you also get information about the specific device the input came from, so you could distinguish between multiple keyboards. That's where most questions having "use RegisterRawInputDevices" as answer are heading. But you can also use it to just capture the input, not caring about the source.)
You can get notified of keyboard/mouse activity (GetLastInputInfo), and I am fairly certain you can get the cursor position (GetMouseMovePointsEx). If you do not need the actual keyboard strokes, then that should do it. If you do, I do not think it can be done...
LASTINPUTINFO lastInputInfo = new LASTINPUTINFO();
UInt32 lastInputTick = lastInputInfo.dwTime;
return Environment.TickCount - (Int32)lastInputInfo.dwTime
This code (C#) return the inactivity time (keyboard and mouse both). So you can have the time since the user is inactive.
How to know if a mouse click is simulated or not? When mouse click send by a program or real mouse device
... I'm programming a system detection for a game to avoid bots, autoclicks,etc that only accept legit mouse clicks
This depends a bit on the kind of application you are writing, but if you can, I would watch the cursor movement, not the clicks.
Human mouse movement has non-uniform speeds, reaction times, imprecisions (clicks on different coordinates of your buttons, etc...).
Also, you can defend a gui against bots by randomly requiring an interaction that is hard to script. For example: If scripts depend upon buttons being always in the same position, I would make sure that, while trying to remain intuitive, the dialog should pop up in slightly different positions every time.
Otherwise: There is no way to detect if the mouse is a real one or a really well simulated one. The Windows HID/MacOS/Linux driver layer abstracts away the distinction between Mice, TrackPens, TrackBalls, draw-pads, touch screens... and of course script-mice...
Although the blog post itself is about a different issue, I refer you to Raymond Chen's excellent Old New Thing. In this specific blog post he talks about the validity of message parameters going into an application, but also makes the point that:
There's no point discussing the possibility that the sender of the message is playing tricks and lying to you because (1) your program should just go along with the ruse and respond to fake menu messages as if they were real menu messages, because (2) there's no way to tell that you're being lied to anyway. To detect lying, you'd have to be able to read into the mindset of the programmer who sent you the message.
Essentially the argument is that you should respond to mouse clicks as mouse clicks, regardless of how those clicks were generated.
Is mouse keys simulated mouse input or legit? The point of simulating mouse input is to make them look exactly like real mouse input. If the simulation is doing its job, then your job is impossible. Sorry, that's the blessing & curse of software for you. Here are some more imperfect ideas:
Use GetKeyboardState and verify that the button states are correct. If the message faker is using PostMessage, they will likely not be setting keyboard state and this would indicate fakery.
If you are targeting known applications that are doing the input simulation, detect them and complain. This is not perfect at all for many reasons.
Fuzzy logic, as many other people have suggested.
You need to be creative and figure out the difference between a simulated event and a real one to you, as there is no generalized answer.
It can't be done (reliably (with software alone anyway))
I've used WIN32API calls to read pixels/manipulate the mouse/send keystrokes to automate large portions of video games and other repetitive tasks. You could write a lot of code to analyze the input, but equally smart developers are just going to modify their code to match.
When I first try to automate a mouse click, that's all I'll do. Send a mouse click. And most of the time it works. You might have code that tracks the mouse movement and the entire stack of mouse events that would fire along with a legitimate click and say, 'That wasn't real - we ignore it' but nothing stops the developer from also implementing mouse movements.
The mouse events are more complex than keypresses; but it's essentially the same idea. If you write code that monitors the time between keypresses and determine that I'm sending the '2' key to your application in EXACTLY 250ms intervals, you might decide I'm a bot. But, all I'll do is modify my code to send the keystroke in 250ms + a random value between -25 and 25 ms.
It's a never-ending game of cat and mouse. The best solution is to make tasks non-trivial so simple forms of automation aren't applicable.
The question is a bit thin on details.
Events can be sent directly to controls without moving the mouse so find out where the mouse is when you get the click event and see if it's on the control. Keyboard input requires control focus, so check that too.
For situations where the mouse moves, you won't be able to tell if the mouse movement is recorded and played back. If its scripted then perhaps you could monitor the mouse behavior in the parent panel(s) of the control and use those events and movements to ascertain whether it is real or not. An automated click might appear from nowhere and cause an flurry of unlikely hover, focus events.
Only way it would be possible is with some specialist hardware and software on the mouse itself that sends evidence of the actual mechanical click. Via software this is not possible.
Although in my other answer I mention that you should ideally just respond to clicks as clicks, there is one possibility that could work, depending on how a "programmatic" click is generated.
I am assuming a Windows platform, due to the "vb.net" tag:
With the WinAPI you can send a message to any window in order to simulate, for example, a WM_LBUTTONDOWN event. In this message you would include the X and Y location of the mouse at the time the button was pressed - or where the receiving program expects it to be. When you handle the message you could use the GetCursorPos call to get the actual cursor position. Verify that the current position is close to that in the message, and handle it as a click, otherwise ignore it.
Bear in mind however that the nature of the message queue is such that it could take some time to handle the event, and the mouse can move a long way in a short space of time.
This solution would only work if the "click" is generated by a simple Send/PostMessage. If the application that is generating the click simulates the movement of the mouse also, then you should probably see the other answers :)
You can check the mouse event flags LLMHF_INJECTED and LLMHF_LOWER_IL_INJECTED or utilize input hooks to monitor mouse input data, where malformed data may indicated that input was injected.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/ns-winuser-msllhookstruct
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/nf-winuser-setwindowshookexa
I'm not sure there is a way to determine with perfect accuracy whether a mouse click is automated or not. I mean, you could write your own USB driver that sits in between the native mouse driver and the OS and relays only "real" clicks to you. However, even that can be defeated by plugging in a USB device (like a smartphone) that's programmed to send USB packets to host computer.
What are you trying to accomplish that requires you to distinguish between real mouse clicks and fake ones?
Create a statistical learning solution by logging the past X mouse events in your program. When the user clicks on the control, determine the probability based on the last X actions that it's a real click.
Train your solution using real clicks and a large variety of automated scenarios.
This is obviously not a guaranteed-to-work solution and is more for fun than anything else.
It is much more harder than what you think because input macro programs produce legit mouse and keyboard input messages to your game. I don't think there is a way to check if the input message is actually triggered by a physical hardware input (like mouse or keyboard) unless OS provides you with accessibility of input-driver-level.
Since this is specifically for a game, you can see how other games handle this situation. Some of the common methods are,
Check frequency of mouse clicks. (human beings cannot click as fast as programs.)
At random points or when it doubts, use CAPTCHA to verify. (Read this: http://www.threadmeters.com/v-1Vvd/CAPTCHA_The_Obvious_AntiBot_Solution/ )
Use outside monitoring tools to inspect all processes running in a machine to find out programs known for cheating purpose. Steam does this. Check Valve Anti-Cheat System Blizzard's WoW also does the same thing with Warden.
My own advice would be "Use your gameplay system". Since every game has its own rules and gameplay styles, it wouldn't be too hard to detect whether a player is cheating or not. This approach won't be a general solution and it could be silly but if it works for your game, why not? :)
There are two ways you could work around this problem.
Make a new Button with a Text proving that the user isn't AFK and if the user doesn't press the button, kick him or her out. Generate the button in random locations.
If the user isn't moving for a while, (for example, 10 mins) kick him or her out.
Basically, when one types, a keydown event happens. If the key is held for more than a certain time (~1 sec) then the key is repeatedly pressed until keyup hapens. I would like to change the time it takes for the key to be automatically repressed in my c++ application. How can this be done?
Thanks
The speed at which a keypress becomes automatically recurring is controlled by Windows.
If you want to manipulate automatic recurrences of key-presses, it might be more advantageous to poll for the state of the key rather than waiting for the keydown event. It depends on how responsive you need your application to be.
This article may help you in figuring out how to query for key states: link
You can use the SystemParametersInfo function to change the keyboard delay and refresh rate, as described in this newsgroup thread.
A simple way to handle this is to establish a buffer of time around the OnKeyDown event. Setup a timer that determines whether control passes to a secondary event handler. If the timer has expired, then it is OK to pass control. If the timer hasn't expired, then you should return and leave the event unhandled. Start the timer right before passing control to your secondary event handler.
void KeyDownHandler(...)
{
// ...
if (TimeLeft() <= 0)
{
StartTimer();
handleKeyDown();
}
}
A timer is better than counting duplicate events because you can't assume that a given system will have the same repeat rate set as yours.
I agree with Stuart that polling for the state of the key might work better. It depends upon what you are trying to accomplish.
Also note that this type of behavior might be highly annoying to your user - why do you need to ignore duplicates?
You might be able to tap into a Windows API but this might be controlled by the OS. Not sure...
You might need to manually draw a command such as to simulate a key press multiple times after a set number of seconds after the key has been pressed.
Use SetKeySpeed api (Kernel)