Mimic an IR remote Volume Button - vb.net

Question

I have a small media player application I've programmed which works really well.
I've even managed an on screen remote control (obviously just a Form with Buttons made to look like a virtual remote control) and yes I've also integrated an Arduino to be able to use a real remote control, but forget the Arduino remote control just for now my question is about the Virtual remote control I'm trying to build.
Programming a Button is quite elementary: it's one of the first things we learn in Vb.net, but that's just in a single click scenario.
If I look at a real TV remote, I can either click (most common with volume buttons) the volume up or down and the response is either that the volume goes up or down by one unit, or I can hold the same button down and it repeats the process changing the unit several times up or down depending on how long before I release the button again.
How would I achieve this?
I have tried googling this but everything I get back as a search result talks about a physical mouse button as apposed to what I need which is a Button control.

Answer 1

An example of an UserControl that provides the functionality of Up/Down spin buttons.
It uses two standard Buttons, a Label and a Timer.
To set it up, add a new UserControl to the Project:
Set its BackColor to Color.Transparent
Add two Buttons, select both and add event handlers to the MouseDown, MouseUp, KeyDown and KeyUp events (selecting both, you'll add 4 method)
Two Unicode chars (U+25B2 and U+25BC) are used to show the arrows. Setup the Buttons' Font size and Color as required (the sample UC uses Segoe UI as Font).
Anchor the upper Button to Left/Top/Right
Anchor the lower Button to Left/Bottom/Right
Anchor the Label to Left/Right
A Timer is created in the UC constructor, its Interval value set to 300. This value represents the initial speed of the increment when a mouse Button or keyboard key is held down. It's decremented each time the Timer ticks until it reaches a threshold defined by the UC's Speed public property (which is internally limited to the (1:10) range).
The maximum and minimum increment are defined by the UC's Min and Max public properties
The Value public property gets or sets the current increment.
The Timer is started when a Mouse Button or a Keyboard key are pressed and stopped when they're released. When the Timer.Tick event is raised, the Timer.Interval is decreased by 25ms until the max Speed value is reached. Since the initial value is set to 300ms and the maximum Speed is limited to 10, the minimum Interval value is 50ms, which is close to the System.Windows.Form.Timer official resolution.
The minimum Interval needs to be considered if these values are changed, to avoid overlapping Tick events.
This is how it works:
Imports System.Windows.Forms
Public Class SpinButtons
Private buttonsTimer As Timer = Nothing
Private timerThrottle As Integer = 0
Private timerIncrement As Integer = 0
Private m_Speed As Integer = 10
Private m_Value As Integer = 0
Public Sub New()
InitializeComponent()
Me.components = New System.ComponentModel.Container()
buttonsTimer = New Timer With {.Interval = 300}
Me.components.Add(buttonsTimer)
End Sub
Public Property Max As Integer = 100
Public Property Min As Integer = 0
Public Property Speed As Integer
Get
Return m_Speed
End Get
Set
m_Speed = Math.Max(Math.Min(Value, 10), 1)
End Set
End Property
Public Property Value As Integer
Get
Return m_Value
End Get
Set
m_Value = Value
SetIncrementValue()
End Set
End Property
Private Sub buttonsTimer_Tick(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
SetIncrementValue()
If timerThrottle <= m_Speed Then
timerThrottle += 1
buttonsTimer.Interval -= 25
End If
End Sub
Private Sub btnUp_MouseDown(sender As Object, e As MouseEventArgs) Handles btnUp.MouseDown, btnDown.MouseDown
ButtonPressed(DirectCast(sender, Button))
SetIncrementValue()
End Sub
Private Sub btnUp_MouseUp(sender As Object, e As MouseEventArgs) Handles btnUp.MouseUp, btnDown.MouseUp
ButtonReleased(DirectCast(sender, Button))
End Sub
Private Sub btnUp_KeyDown(sender As Object, e As KeyEventArgs) Handles btnUp.KeyDown, btnDown.KeyDown
ButtonPressed(DirectCast(sender, Button))
SetIncrementValue()
End Sub
Private Sub btnUp_KeyUp(sender As Object, e As KeyEventArgs) Handles btnUp.KeyUp, btnDown.KeyUp
ButtonReleased(DirectCast(sender, Button))
End Sub
Private Sub SetIncrementValue()
m_Value += timerIncrement
m_Value = Math.Max(Math.Min(m_Value, Max), Min)
lblCounter.Text = m_Value.ToString()
End Sub
Private Sub ButtonPressed(btn As Button)
btn.ForeColor = Color.LawnGreen
timerIncrement = If(btn Is btnUp, 1, -1)
buttonsTimer.Enabled = True
End Sub
Private Sub ButtonReleased(btn As Button)
buttonsTimer.Enabled = False
buttonsTimer.Interval = 300
timerThrottle = 0
timerIncrement = 0
btn.ForeColor = Color.White
End Sub
Protected Overrides Sub OnFontChanged(e As EventArgs)
MyBase.OnFontChanged(e)
Me.btnUp.Font = Me.Font
Me.btnDown.Font = Me.Font
End Sub
Protected Overrides Sub OnResize(e As EventArgs)
MyBase.OnResize(e)
Me.MinimumSize = New Size(CInt(Me.Font.Size * 2), Me.btnUp.Height + Me.btnDown.Height + lblCounter.Height)
End Sub
End Class