Does LabVIEW take over keyboard presses?

Question

I'm using a C api in my LabVIEW application through a call-library-function-node. I'd like to be able to gather keypress info in one of the functions in the DLL, but it seems like LabVIEW is hijacking the values gathered by the C function from the keyboard. Any info on this? Thanks!

Answer 1

Thanks for all the replies! I'll respond in order:
"Instead of a DLL, can you compile your code into an executable, and then call it with System Exec?"
Haven't tried this yet. The reason I'm using a DLL is that I'm using an API for an out-of-the-box device (an eye-position tracker), and I've written several functions that I need to access, so it would be kind of a pain to write code for multiple executables, but I can do this if it comes down to it.
"Is there a reason you don't want to monitor the keyboard in LabVIEW? Look at the Connectivity>Input Device Control palette."
"Another way to monitor the keyboard or mouse in LV is to use an event structure. There are events and filter events for keyboard and mouse."
Putting these two together since they have the same answer... Long story short, I can't, once the function I'm calling is triggered correctly, it's waiting for user-input on the keyboard and thus the input read by labview will go unnoticed (I tried this several different ways).
"IIRC, CLNs execute in the UI thread.  It seems to me that if you use a CLN to call something that also is trying to access the UI thread, they could deadlock (but I have never tried this).  Could that be the issue?"
I'm actually a novice C coder and self-taught labviewer, this sound super intriguing, EXPLAIN PLEASE!
Finally, I'd like to mention that I have made a small amount of progress on my own with this issue. I believe that I need to create a window using something like the function CreateWindowEx, part of the native windows user interface functions, because when one creates a window, one also makes a process to handle events like user-input. I suspect that whatever process is created by labview to handle user input in the VI is rightly in charge of handling key-presses (I also suspect that creating an executable might get around this as well since the exe might create a process to handle UI), so it's more like my DLL is actually the one trying to hijack the key-presses, not the other way around. If this is so, I should be able to simply create a dummy window (drawing it off screen so I can still see all my front-panel stuff in LabVIEW)  to handle the UI and then kill it when I'm done. I'm trying to do this at present, but my novice C coder status is making it a bit slow going. I was hoping some LabVIEW engineer or somebody else might have dealt with this type of issue in the past and could simply send me some code to make it all a moot point...
Again, thanks for all the replies and suggestions!