Hotkey to activate plugin?

[bigz1]

Just added a webacam for edgefinding. I have put a button on screen to turn on the video plugin. What I want o nknow is how to hotkey the plugin so I can asign it to the button?

[micsit1]

Basically you have to use Keygrabber.
Go to mach website or just open the following PDF
http://machsupport.com/documentation/Customizing.pdf
Read pages 8-1 to 8-1-10

Michel

[ger21]

If you have the button working, you can use Screen designer to assign a hotkey to it. If you want to know how to get the button to work, I can't help you there. But if it does work, I'd like to know how you did it.

[bigz1]

Basically you have to use Keygrabber.
Go to mach website or just open the following PDF
http://machsupport.com/documentation/Customizing.pdf
Read pages 8-1 to 8-1-10

Michel

Michel how can assign a hotkey to open up the video camera plugin with keygrabber?

Ger21 as soon as figured this out I will let you know. I have got the button working and I know how to asign a hotkey it just linking it to the plugin.

[ger21]

I have got the button working and I know how to asign a hotkey it just linking it to the plugin.

I don't think you can do that, but you'll need to ask Brian on the Yahoo group to get a good answer.

[micsit1]

1. A video cam is not recognized as HID by Keygrabber.

2. Plugin control on first upper row is not part of any screen therefore you cannot see or assign a button to it using any screen designer. It's part of Microsoft Windows internal program and is built off from scratch at the initial code writting of any program under MSWINDOWS.

3. I am not sure if U can use a macro (VB script) to run it under Mach3, ask someone more experienced in this field.

Michel

[neilw20]

At low level you can stuff a key into the keyboard buffer.
A low level DOS/Windows type program can be call from VB.
If you stuff Alt-tab you could swap to another program, just like hitting the keyboard.
Is it really worth the effort? Just use Alt-tab to swap to the program.
Windows will do all the hard work.
Start the camera program before Mach3.
Caveat:
Mach3 might not work properly if you steal focus from it (and especially the keyboard), but if you are not running G-Code at the the time who cares.
If you don't run Mach3 in full screen, you should be able to see at least part of your camera view, if the software driving it updates in the background.