Labview as recorder.exe

Question

Do you remember from ancient times, the Win3.1, program -
recorder.exe.
This file records the movements of the mouse and key pressed and
be able to do the same later on demand.
Can Labview control other applications while it is hidden and
other applications are "on top". Another words if it is possible
to emulate mouse and keyboard by Labview to be visible from
another applications as a normal operator work.
E.g.. (dummy) I have a CD-player and I want Labview to press
"start" button in this program every one hour. This is not real
example but this is what I would like to know.
thank you for help in advance
PP

Answer 1

This would be an interesting application! In order to control external applications, such as the CD player example you used, you would need to use ActiveX controls. You would need an ActiveX control for each application you want to control from LabVIEW. Now, one thing about ActiveX is that LabVIEW must open up the applications through ActiveX. In other words, you can not open Microsoft Word yourself and then have LabVIEW control that instance of it.
You would need to create a program which simulates certain clicks and selections and then run this program each time you want them to occur. Or, you could also put the VIs in a loop and have it run 24 hours, although this may consume needed processor power.
LabVIEW can simulate keyboard events. I am atta
ching a VI from the National Instruments website which shows how this is done. You may want to take a look at this.
Basically, what you are wanting to do is create "macros." They "record" actions that a user makes on their computer and then are able to "replay" these actions at later times. There are actually software packages that do this and they would be much easier to do that using LabVIEW to build your own. Here is an example of one. You may want to check these out because it sounds like this is what you are wanting to do.
J.R. Allen
Attachments:
Simulate_Keyboard.vi ‏41 KB