LCD Smartie

plugin for global (system-wide) hotkeys

powerful - up to 19 system-wide hotkeys are supported.

flexible - key codes and actions to be performed by LCD Smartie are defined by the user.

free - full source code release under the terms of the GNU General Public License


quick start example:
- copy hotkey.dll and hotkey.ini into LCD Smartie plugins folder
- open the setup window of LCD Smartie and go to Actions tab
- add a new action: If $dll(hotkey,1,,) > 0 Then BacklightToggle
- press Add button and then OK button to apply the new settings
- the first hotkey is activated: press Ctrl-F10 to toggle LCD backlight on/off.


Please read the included ReadMe.txt for details about the configuration.

update 2005-07-14 - first release version
update 2007-12-17 - attached file hotkey_plugin.zip here

(bump)

first full release announced

Great result...
can't wait to configure keys for themes!

Thanks

Driving the LCD Smartie to the edge (and it's functions) I think I've discovered a bug in the plugin.

I'm running two (and sometimes more) instances of LCD Smartie with different configuration files (config.ini) to drive more than one displays from my computer!
The plugin is working great with the first instance of LCD Smartie but when I try to assign a new hotkey to the second, I get the following message when I start the second instance: "hotkey plugin" "ERROR: RegisterHotKey() failed for hotkey #1"

Clicking OK allows me to run Smartie without plugin...

Please check it out (it's not a major bug but I think You can override it!)

Wow two displays and two smarties. Your dedicated limbo, I'll give you that.

J

limbo wrote: The plugin is working great with the first instance of LCD Smartie but when I try to assign a new hotkey to the second, I get the following message when I start the second instance: "hotkey plugin" "ERROR: RegisterHotKey() failed for hotkey #1"

Oh, I never thought about running more than one instance of LCD Smartie. Hotkey plugin can be used for that but it is a bit complicated. Read on.

problem
The most common reason for RegisterHotkey() to fail is that the specific hotkey (modifier/virtualkey combination) is already registered as a global hotkey.

solution
If you run two instances of LCD Smartie then you must make sure that they use different hotkeys. It is not possible to use the same hotkeys in both instances at the same time.

Hotkey plugin reads the key codes from the file "hotkey.ini". This file must be inside the "plugins" folder, which is located in the folder where "LCDSmartie.exe" resides. So, in order to have two different copies of "hotkey.ini" you have to have two different copies of the entire LCD Smartie folder (including "plugins" sub-folder).

notes
I see that this is inconvinient but this is the way it currently works. Maybe I should think about a better solution...

On the other hand, the "key plugin" by akx does not have these restrictions. It doesn't register any hotkeys in Windows, instead it polls the keyboard directly. Therefore, two instances of LCD Smartie can use the same keys without any problems.

I'm trying to use this hotkey dll to turn my backlight on and off. I have successfully installed the plugin and the hotkey ctrl-F10 turns the backlight on and off in the LCD smartie window, but the backlight on my physical LCD screen stays on. Does that mean I need to learn more about electronics or is there some separate function to turn the backlight on and off that I need to use?

Thanks

Rob

APillowOfClouds wrote:I'm trying to use this hotkey dll to turn my backlight on and off. I have successfully installed the plugin and the hotkey ctrl-F10 turns the backlight on and off in the LCD smartie window, but the backlight on my physical LCD screen stays on. Does that mean I need to learn more about electronics or is there some separate function to turn the backlight on and off that I need to use?

Thanks

Rob

Probably you are using parallel connection to your LCD... YOU have to use the cicruit that drives the backlight through a transistor.

We are indeed using a circuit where there is a transistor, I think it drives the backlight but I'm not totally certain of that (not a huge electronics person) - we used this schematic http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net/LCDconnect.jpg

APillowOfClouds wrote:We are indeed using a circuit where there is a transistor, I think it drives the backlight but I'm not totally certain of that (not a huge electronics person) - we used this schematic http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net/LCDconnect.jpg

Take a look here: http://forums.lcdsmartie.org/viewtopic.php?p=794

Thanks but it turned out I had the base and collector switched on the transistor, so my bad. BTW if you do that it doesn't work