Display NUMLOCK status?

[terrypin]

For my new PC I chose a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse. A poor choice now that I realise it obviously has no Numlock LED indicator due to the battery limitation.

 

I've just installed MS Flight Simulator, a birthday present from my son. Its flying controls vary significantly depending on whether Numlock is enabled or not. Anyone know of a simple way I can toggle a small message window displaying if it's ON or OFF please?. That would be marginally preferable to pressing Numlock to see what happens to my aircraft

 

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[rberq]

On my keyboard, if Num Lock is on and you have a macro type Shift and 7 on the keypad, it will type 7. But with Num Lock off, Shift and 7 will type nothing (it is the Home key). (Note that MacroExpress in this case performs differently than the native keyboard entry -- so this solution may be relying on a bug in ME, or maybe my keyboard is just different from others.)

 

In MacroExpress you can "press" the keypad 7 by using the "Misc Keys" section of Text Type.

 

So,

(1) Launch Notepad

(2) Text type <SHIFTD><KEYP7><SHIFTU>

(3) Text type <SHIFTD><ARROW LEFT><SHIFTU> which will highlight the character you just typed (if any)

(4) Insert the highlighted character into the clipboard and from there into variable T1

(5) Check the value of T1. If it is 7, then Num Lock must be on. If it is blank or null then Num Lock must be off.

 

Check other recent forum postings. You may be able to do the Notepad interactions invisibly, that is without Notepad coming up as the top window and obscuring your altimeter or your Gatling Gun controls or whatever.

[terrypin]

Thanks, I'll give that approach a try if nothing simpler emerges. I wonder if perhaps there's a registry entry for Numlock?

 

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[kunkel321]

Another workaround might be to setup a hotkey that's conveniently located near (but doesn't conflict with) your flight controls... The hotkey would be for a macro that simply turns off your NumLock. If you ever think you might've accidentally bumped the NumLock, or left it on, just quickly hit the hot key. YOu could even scope it to only work when your simulator was running ....

Also, you could have it with dual activation: the hot key, or the window title of the application (THough I'm not sure if you can activate a macro with the presence of a window/application and simltaneously scope it for when the window/application is already funning ??? )

-steve

[terrypin]

Thanks for the alternative suggestion. I actually got stuck in and wrote the macro along the lines suggested by rberq. Happy to say it works fine. On using a hotkey combination (had to look hard for one still unused by FSX!) it pops up a small message window headed 'NUMLOCK Status' containing either 'ON' or 'OFF', and I then hit Enter (or click OK) to close it. That appears on top of whatever FSX window is active.

 

But it's now redundant! Someone suggested a freeware program that puts indicators in the system tray, next to the clock:

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/systrayindicator.html

and that works a treat.

 

I've rarely used MX's Logical commands before, so I'm sure my code could be much improved. (Would welcome tips.) Here it is anyway, in case anyone else ends up here and finds it useful.

 

// Display status of NUMLOCK
Keystroke Speed: 10 Milliseconds
Activate Window: "TextPad"
Text Type: <CONTROL>n
Text Type: <SHIFTD><KEYP7><SHIFTU>
Text Type: <SHIFTD><ARROW LEFT><SHIFTU>
Delay 100 Milliseconds
Text Type: <CONTROL>c
Window Minimize: "TextPad"
Variable Set String %T1% from Clipboard
If Variable %T1% = "7"
 Text Box Display: NUMLOCK Status
 Clipboard Empty
 Activate Window: "TextPad"
 Text Type: <CONTROL><F4>
 Delay 50 Milliseconds
 Text Type: n
 Delay 50 Milliseconds
 Window Minimize: "TextPad"
 Macro Return
Else
 Text Box Display: NUMLOCK Status
 Activate Window: "TextPad"
 Text Type: <CONTROL><F4>
 Delay 50 Milliseconds
End If
Window Minimize: "TextPad"
Macro Return

 

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK