I need to starting my app when our USB device connected.
My first attempt at this is a background application that pays attention to when USB devices are plugged in. When it notices our device connected, it calls ShellExecute( ) and starts our application.
This works nicely except in Windows 8. Supposing we're on the "Start" screen in Windows 8. In that situation, the application starts in the background and the start screen remains in front.
I think this is a "focus" problem since what I'm actually hoping to do is "steal focus" from the Start screen.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/02/20/9435239.aspx
Since my background application doesn't have focus (the Start screen has focus; besides, my application doesn't have a UI), it can't give focus away to my foreground application.
Let me say that in general, I hate focus stealing. Starting the app the user wants to use is a great help to our users.
How can I fix this problem? Maybe the answer is to programmatically ask the start screen to start my app but I don't see a way to do that:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsdesktop/en-US/9ed23f32-0708-48a8-9ff7-5fce6dbe123f/windows-8-start-screen-api
Maybe I'm approaching this in the wrong way. Suggestions?
You're going about this the wrong way. Although you can write a program to constantly monitor the USB ports to detect when something is connected, there's no need. The OS is already doing that anyway.
Register an Autoplay handler for your device type and class. This is distinct from the old AutoRun feature, which would automatically execute programs found on an inserted file system.
You can begin with an overview of the feature from the November 2001 issue of MSDN Magazine.
Your handler will be a COM DLL. You can register the DLL as a handler, and register the handler with events you want to handle. You can either perform everything in the DLL, or you can put the bulk of the functionality in your application and just use the DLL as a proxy between the OS and your program.
Related
Basically, I'm looking for any way to go about this at all, no matter how cumbersome or unintuitive, so long as it can be done on iOS 7 (which the third party SBSettings framework currently cannot), and can be done on a non-jailbroken device.
This is for an app which will be loaded into iPads in a physical enclosure so the power button is inaccessible. The device itself will be in single app mode, which cannot be enabled or disabled except through our network-accessed MDM solution. The issue I'm trying to find a way around is that every now and then, the network connection stops functioning and the only way to re-establish it is to restart the device, which can't be done without an internet connection other than to physically press the inaccessible buttons. The reboot action would be password-locked in a hidden event handler and so inaccessible to normal users. This is not an app that will ever see the app store, so Apple's user interface guidelines don't necessarily apply.
Alternatively, is there any way to enable/disable assistive touch programmatically or any other possible method that will enable rebooting the device while in single app mode without physically touching the power button?
This is not a real answer (just thinking aloud).
Obviously, you can't do this through public API.
I believe, API's like SBReset can't do this either, because they are protected by entitlement.
I believe your simplest option to find some reasonably low level API which crashes and use it to crash a device.
I had exactly the same question some time ago:A way to reboot iOS device or restart Springboard using private API?
P.S. I don't have a way to find these crashes. I would recommnd to talk to jailbreak community (people who come up with jailbreaks for iOS devices). They collect all kinds of crashes. Most of these crashes aren't exploitable. However, you don't need an exploit, you just need a OS crash.
My Windows Phone XNA game calls Guide.BeginShowKeyboardInput to get the user's name. While the Guide's input screen is shown, if the user presses the Home or Search (hardware) buttons, the game is deactivated as usual - but if the user then presses the Back (hardware) button, the game should resume but it doesn't. Instead it shows the "Resuming..." message until Windows Phone gives up trying to resume the game and kills the process.
Please note:
My app is failing Microsoft certification because of this problem - I really need to fix it!
This only happens in my game when the Guide input screen is shown - when it's not shown, the game
resumes properly after being deactivated.
This problem only occurs when the game is run on WP7.x (verified problem on WP7.5 and
WP7.8) - although the game seems to resume properly on WP8 devices.
I've created a blank XNA game project, called Guide.BeginShowKeyboardInput and tested it using WP7.x devices, and this problem-behavior doesn't occur.
I've tested the game without enabling Music & my Trial License manager (they use timers) and it still does this.
Exact same behavior occurs in the emulator (resume-failure on WP7.x emulators, works fine on WP8
emulator)
I used threads to asynchronously download content during the loading screen - but they already completed and exited.
I don't believe other threads are running, although this seems like
it could be a thread-blocking issue.
Any other ideas on what could be blocking the game from resuming when the Guide.IsVisible or how to debug/resolve this problem?
The solution to this issue was simply to NOT use SuppressDraw when dealing with any operation that passes control outside of the app, e.g. Launchers, Choosers and the Guide.
Have you tried calling "Guide.EndShowKeyboardInput" in either the Deactivating or closing events?
So that the guide is closed before the app suspends, you do get 10 seconds to suspend so this might be worth looking into.
If you want the guide to re-show on resume, then in your state saving code just have a flag and open the guide if it's set.
I have 3 monitors, but I don't need them all turned on all the time. I can just shut them down with power button, but I want to use their standby mode, like Windows does when we let PC idle for a while - it shuts down monitors, HDD, etc.
But of course, I wanna keep using PC and let just that monitor on standby. Others must remain on and that one doesn't wake up even with me using PC.
Is it possible to do that? It would be great to have a shortcut like Winkey+1, 2, 3 etc to shut down and wake up each monitor.
An existing app with this feature is not likely to exist, but is there a Windows API function that can control monitor state, for each monitor in a MultiMonitor system?
The display control panel applet calls SetDisplayConfig to start or stop forced projection on a particular target
You can probably use MS Detours or some other API hooking tool to inspect the usage pattern of the API while using the applet to adjust display settings.
You'll want to try Display Fusion. You should be able to do what you're asking for using Monitor configurations.
I know I'm late on this but use DDC to control your display. You can easily create hotkeys that send a command via DDC to the display to turn-off. This would be equivalent to turning off the display using the button. Works like a charm for me. The only trick is that DDC command specs vary across monitor manufacturers but its not hard to find the right codes to send with the help of google.
Ready made tools also exist for this; search for anything that is related to DDC or EDID and you should find.
Be aware though that this does not remove the display from Windows which means that apps may find their way onto displays that are off and you will be looking for them.
I want to simulate hardware key Back from PC. It's for automation test. I use windows phone test framework by expensify, but it do not support real device.
This can't be done on the real device unless you use robots (I am talking with LessPainful and this may happen one day!)
If this is required for your real device automation tests now, then the only things I can suggest are:
that you hook a new custom command into the automation stack and then respond to that command by calling Back on the RootFrame's navigation stack.
this might not be a perfect simulation of what would happen for a real back button press (e.g. if a modal dialog is up) - in which case you'll need to engineer code into your app to simulate the flow of the back press.
if you ask around on XDA developers then someone might have a solution for you (there are ways to hack the OS on your test phont...)
Is it possible to emulate a device sleeping and waking using the Microsoft-supplied device emulators?
Yes, but you have to generate your own emulator image with a modified kernel (changing OEMPowerOff). Bruce Eitman blogged about it here. You didn't detail your needs, so it's hard to say, but you might be able to provide some form of simulation by manually setting the named power management events.
This is an old thread, but in case anyone else stumbles across it, you can make the Windows Mobile emulators 'sleep' and wake up, though not with the debugger attached.
Close the emulator window while your application is running and save the state. Or, configure power management to sleep the emulator at the desired time; the emulator will close and save its state automatically. If the debugger is attached, it will lose its connection and stop debugging.
Open Device Emulator Manager and click Refresh until the emulator shows up as disconnected (no icon next to it). Right-click on the emulator name and select Connect.
Emulator wakes up and reappears. If your application is listening for the wake-up notification, it will be signaled at this point.
You can also wake up the emulator using Debug > Attach to Process, though this does not always succeed. Either way, by the time the debugger attaches, the wake up sequence will already have executed. If you can get by with debug statements, though, this is easier than modding the emulator image.