I'm using makey makey to control a patch running on the raspberry pi 3, using the keyname object. Everything runs fine when running with a monitor, but I try to run the patch in headless mode the keyname object just doesn't seem to work. pd seems to run fine, I can get audio but the patch just doesn't respond to the makey makey.

Anyone have any experience with this, or know of any workarounds?

I believe the issue arises from the method the {key} family receives keyboard data through the OS. You can use [hid] to poll the keyboard without window focus.

That makes sense, thanks! Though I'm having a hell of a time getting pd to load the hid external on the rpi. I've put the folder in /usr/lib/pd/extra and tried using the declare object but it just won't load...

@altibzz I think you probably need [linuxhid]
http://puredata.info/Members/hans/linuxhid-2003.11.17.tar.gz/view
David.

Thanks, unfortunately that doesn't seem to load either. When I load the object it just seems to load a subpatch with the help patches for the objects, though the objects themselves don't load... which is really odd considering they're all in the same folder.

I eventually just installed pd-l2ork which has the [hid] object included, and it works! Can't figure out why it won't load in vanilla.

@altibzz Did you find a solution for this problem? I can't find a way to load the hid library on my rpi3.
I want to start Pd headless on boot and it should receive all the keyboard actions.

@laekerol Probably to do with window focus. The hid objects grab keyboard input only when their window is in focus. You might be able to force the focus in your patch with a delayed loadbang to a message......
[;
pd-patchname vis 1(

where patchname is the name of the pd patch that contains the hid object.

I am not sure though that window focus will have any meaning without a display. That might depend on the window manager...... unsure.
David.

Thanks for the quick answer. I tried something like this before, but it doesn't seem reliable enough for my purpose. I use processing now and send the keyboard actions via UDP to my patch.

@altibzz were the libraries that you tried compiled for your architecure? as i understand it - and i might be not quite right! - the libraries have to either be pre-compiled for your cpu/os or you compile them yourself. at least that's the case with some objects, i think.

as for [hid] on raspberry (3b+, raspbian stretch), i couldn't find anything on deken, but i think "sudo apt-get install pd-hid" did the trick for me.
it works with my wireless keyboard. i quickly tried an example-patch to find out whether the window's focus has something to do with pd's receiving of the data. with the gui active, i could switch windows and it still worked, but starting Pd with the -nogui flag, it didn't work, because - it seemed that - the keyboard inputs where only interpreted (and thus 'intercepted'?) by the terminal (the terminal's ascii cursor was moved by typing) and not Pd anymore. but this was just a quick and dirty test!

@altibzz said:

That makes sense, thanks! Though I'm having a hell of a time getting pd to load the hid external on the rpi. I've put the folder in /usr/lib/pd/extra and tried using the declare object but it just won't load...

i have spent entire day on this shit
here is what you need to add to PD command line,in my example was ELSE lib
-path /home/pi/Documents/Pd/externals/ -lib else

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