Software Keyboard Simulator
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Hello, I was just wondering whether it was possible to connect two PCs with a USB cable and simulate a keyboard on one of them. I know I could do this with a client/server system using DirectInput, but would it still be possible without installing any software on the target machine? If possible I would like to avoid using any micro-controller between the to PCs. Any ideas whether that's possible or not? Ben
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Hello, I was just wondering whether it was possible to connect two PCs with a USB cable and simulate a keyboard on one of them. I know I could do this with a client/server system using DirectInput, but would it still be possible without installing any software on the target machine? If possible I would like to avoid using any micro-controller between the to PCs. Any ideas whether that's possible or not? Ben
RedDragon2k wrote:
without installing any software on the target machine
Obviously something must run to capture the input on the target machine and inject it into the OS. So presumably you just mean that you don't want to install it first. Should be possible to get the USB itself to do it. You might start by looking into how one boots an OS from a memory stick. Such articles have detailed info on how USB works.
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Hello, I was just wondering whether it was possible to connect two PCs with a USB cable and simulate a keyboard on one of them. I know I could do this with a client/server system using DirectInput, but would it still be possible without installing any software on the target machine? If possible I would like to avoid using any micro-controller between the to PCs. Any ideas whether that's possible or not? Ben
There is no standard for connecting PCs together with a USB cable that I know of, however if you write the driver for the computer sending the commands, you could make it appear as a keyboard to the other computer so you wont need anything on the remote computer. I'm not too familiar with USB drivers, but if you get the Windows DDK[^] and take a look there are some sample USB drivers in the src folder.
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Hello, I was just wondering whether it was possible to connect two PCs with a USB cable and simulate a keyboard on one of them. I know I could do this with a client/server system using DirectInput, but would it still be possible without installing any software on the target machine? If possible I would like to avoid using any micro-controller between the to PCs. Any ideas whether that's possible or not? Ben
Your program should send out signal through the USB port you are using to connect to the target machine exactly the same signal a keyboard would send (when you use a USB keyboard). The target computer will simply believe that a USB keyboard is being plugged to the USB port. That means it's possible to achieve what you want to do. You need to work on the details, though. I believe you need to use Windows DDK to write programs to deal with USB.
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Your program should send out signal through the USB port you are using to connect to the target machine exactly the same signal a keyboard would send (when you use a USB keyboard). The target computer will simply believe that a USB keyboard is being plugged to the USB port. That means it's possible to achieve what you want to do. You need to work on the details, though. I believe you need to use Windows DDK to write programs to deal with USB.
Alright, I have clicked through the DDK, but from what I understand it doesn't seem possible to accomplish. Apparently a PC can only act as a host control, and will identify itself as such to the other computer. Any ideas for starting points?