Best way to know if application is inactive in cocoa mac OSX? - objective-c

So, i am building a program that will stand on a exhibition for public usage, and i got a task to make a inactive state for it. Just display some random videos from a folder on the screen, like a screensaver but in the application.
So what is the best and proper way of checking if the user is inactive?
What i am thinking about is some kind of global timer that gets reset on every user input and if it reaches lets say 1 minute it goes into inactive mode. Are there any better ways?

You can use CGEventSourceSecondsSinceLastEventType
Returns the elapsed time since the last event for a Quartz event
source.
/*
To get the elapsed time since the previous input event—keyboard, mouse, or tablet—specify kCGAnyInputEventType.
*/
- (CFTimeInterval)systemIdleTime
{
CFTimeInterval timeSinceLastEvent = CGEventSourceSecondsSinceLastEventType(kCGEventSourceStateHIDSystemState, kCGAnyInputEventType);
return timeSinceLastEvent;
}

I'm expanding on Parag Bafna's answer. In Qt you can do
#include <ApplicationServices/ApplicationServices.h>
double MyClass::getIdleTime() {
CFTimeInterval timeSinceLastEvent = CGEventSourceSecondsSinceLastEventType(kCGEventSourceStateHIDSystemState, kCGAnyInputEventType);
return timeSinceLastEvent;
}
You also have to add the framework to your .pro file:
QMAKE_LFLAGS += -F/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework
LIBS += -framework ApplicationServices
The documentation of the function is here

I've found a solution that uses the HID manager, this seems to be the way to do it in Cocoa. (There's another solution for Carbon, but it doesn't work for 64bit OS X.)
Citing Daniel Reese on the Dan and Cheryl's Place blog:
#include <IOKit/IOKitLib.h>
/*
Returns the number of seconds the machine has been idle or -1 on error.
The code is compatible with Tiger/10.4 and later (but not iOS).
*/
int64_t SystemIdleTime(void) {
int64_t idlesecs = -1;
io_iterator_t iter = 0;
if (IOServiceGetMatchingServices(kIOMasterPortDefault,
IOServiceMatching("IOHIDSystem"),
&iter) == KERN_SUCCESS)
{
io_registry_entry_t entry = IOIteratorNext(iter);
if (entry) {
CFMutableDictionaryRef dict = NULL;
kern_return_t status;
status = IORegistryEntryCreateCFProperties(entry,
&dict,
kCFAllocatorDefault, 0);
if (status == KERN_SUCCESS)
{
CFNumberRef obj = CFDictionaryGetValue(dict,
CFSTR("HIDIdleTime"));
if (obj) {
int64_t nanoseconds = 0;
if (CFNumberGetValue(obj,
kCFNumberSInt64Type,
&nanoseconds))
{
// Convert from nanoseconds to seconds.
idlesecs = (nanoseconds >> 30);
}
}
CFRelease(dict);
}
IOObjectRelease(entry);
}
IOObjectRelease(iter);
}
return idlesecs;
}
The code has been slightly modified, to make it fit into the 80-character limit of stackoverflow.

This might sound like a silly question; but why not just set up a screensaver, with a short fuse?
You can listen for the NSNotification named #"com.apple.screensaver.didstart" if you need to do any resets or cleanups when the user wanders away.
Edit: You could also set up the screen saver; wait for it to fire, and then do your own thing when it starts, stopping the screen saver when you display your own videos; but setting up a screen saver the proper way is probably a good idea.

Take a look at UKIdleTimer, maybe it's what you're looking for.

Related

STML4 USB virtual com port

I have the nucleo board (nucleo-L4R5ZI) and want to write a code to be able to send data from a uC to a PC via the USB. I followed some tutorials, used STM32CubeMx, other solutions found across the Internet, but anyways I failed. I can open the vcp on the PC side (using Hterm, TeraTerm and Realterm), but cannot get any data.
I use Eclipse and the buildin debugger, which I flashed to JLink.
The main loop:
int main(void)
{
HAL_Init();
SystemClock_Config();
MX_GPIO_Init();
MX_USB_DEVICE_Init();
HAL_Delay(10000);
uint8_t HiMsg[] = "0123456789987654321001234567899876543210\r\n";
while (1)
{
if( CDC_Transmit_FS(HiMsg, 20) == USBD_OK )
{
HAL_GPIO_TogglePin(GPIOB, GPIO_PIN_7); // blue LED
}
HAL_GPIO_TogglePin(GPIOB, GPIO_PIN_14); // red LED
HAL_Delay(1000);
}
}
After executing this function, the blue LED lights only once and never changes its state (does not blink). It means that the CDC_Transmit_FS(...) returns USBD_OK only once, and next calls give USBD_Busy.
The MX_USB_DEVICE_Init() looks as follow:
void MX_USB_DEVICE_Init(void)
{
USBD_Init(&hUsbDeviceFS, &FS_Desc, DEVICE_FS);
USBD_RegisterClass(&hUsbDeviceFS, &USBD_CDC);
USBD_CDC_RegisterInterface(&hUsbDeviceFS, &USBD_Interface_fops_FS);
USBD_Start(&hUsbDeviceFS);
USBD_CDC_Init (&hUsbDeviceFS, &USBD_CDC); // I need to init it somewhere so I think here is a good place
}
The CDC_Transmit_FS looks like that:
uint8_t CDC_Transmit_FS(uint8_t* Buf, uint16_t Len)
{
uint8_t result = USBD_OK;
/* USER CODE BEGIN 7 */
CDC_Init_FS();
USBD_CDC_HandleTypeDef *hcdc = (USBD_CDC_HandleTypeDef*)hUsbDeviceFS.pClassData;
if (hcdc->TxState != 0){
return USBD_BUSY;
}
USBD_CDC_SetTxBuffer(&hUsbDeviceFS, Buf, Len);
result = USBD_CDC_TransmitPacket(&hUsbDeviceFS);
CDC_Init_FS();
/* USER CODE END 7 */
return result;
}
Does anyone know how to make it running? What do I miss?
Best,
This part look suspicious:
result = USBD_CDC_TransmitPacket(&hUsbDeviceFS);
CDC_Init_FS();
The call to CDC_Init_FS() probably kills the packet before it had a chance to be sent to the host.
SO... I found the solution!
I can confirm that the code above works (just remove the CDC_Init_FS)!
Acctully, it was a driver problem. for windows 10 you also need to install it despide what's written in the reference

Keep network connection alive in sleep mode for OSX [duplicate]

Is there way to prevent a Mac from going to sleep programmatically using Objective-C? The I/O kit fundamentals section on Apple's dev site tells me that a driver gets notified of an idle / system sleep, but I can't find a way of preventing the system from sleeping. Is it even possible?
I've come across some other solutions using Caffeine, jiggler, sleepless and even AppleScript, but I want to do this in Objective-C. Thanks.
Here is the official Apple documentation (including code snippet):
Technical Q&A QA1340 - How to I prevent sleep?
Quote: Preventing sleep using I/O Kit in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard:
#import <IOKit/pwr_mgt/IOPMLib.h>
// kIOPMAssertionTypeNoDisplaySleep prevents display sleep,
// kIOPMAssertionTypeNoIdleSleep prevents idle sleep
// reasonForActivity is a descriptive string used by the system whenever it needs
// to tell the user why the system is not sleeping. For example,
// "Mail Compacting Mailboxes" would be a useful string.
// NOTE: IOPMAssertionCreateWithName limits the string to 128 characters.
CFStringRef* reasonForActivity= CFSTR("Describe Activity Type");
IOPMAssertionID assertionID;
IOReturn success = IOPMAssertionCreateWithName(kIOPMAssertionTypeNoDisplaySleep,
kIOPMAssertionLevelOn, reasonForActivity, &assertionID);
if (success == kIOReturnSuccess)
{
// Add the work you need to do without
// the system sleeping here.
success = IOPMAssertionRelease(assertionID);
// The system will be able to sleep again.
}
For older OSX version, check the following:
Technical Q&A QA1160 - How can I prevent system sleep while my application is running?
Quote: Example usage of UpdateSystemActivity (the canonical way for < 10.6)
#include <CoreServices/CoreServices.h>
void
MyTimerCallback(CFRunLoopTimerRef timer, void *info)
{
UpdateSystemActivity(OverallAct);
}
int
main (int argc, const char * argv[])
{
CFRunLoopTimerRef timer;
CFRunLoopTimerContext context = { 0, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL };
timer = CFRunLoopTimerCreate(NULL, CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent(), 30, 0, 0, MyTimerCallback, &context);
if (timer != NULL) {
CFRunLoopAddTimer(CFRunLoopGetCurrent(), timer, kCFRunLoopCommonModes);
}
/* Start the run loop to receive timer callbacks. You don't need to
call this if you already have a Carbon or Cocoa EventLoop running. */
CFRunLoopRun();
CFRunLoopTimerInvalidate(timer);
CFRelease(timer);
return (0);
}
Apple's Q&A1340 replaces Q&A1160. The latest Q&A answers the question "Q: How can my application get notified when the computer is going to sleep or waking from sleep? How do I prevent sleep?"
Listing 2 of Q&A1340:
#import <IOKit/pwr_mgt/IOPMLib.h>
// kIOPMAssertionTypeNoDisplaySleep prevents display sleep,
// kIOPMAssertionTypeNoIdleSleep prevents idle sleep
//reasonForActivity is a descriptive string used by the system whenever it needs
// to tell the user why the system is not sleeping. For example,
// "Mail Compacting Mailboxes" would be a useful string.
// NOTE: IOPMAssertionCreateWithName limits the string to 128 characters.
CFStringRef* reasonForActivity= CFSTR("Describe Activity Type");
IOPMAssertionID assertionID;
IOReturn success = IOPMAssertionCreateWithName(kIOPMAssertionTypeNoDisplaySleep,
kIOPMAssertionLevelOn, reasonForActivity, &assertionID);
if (success == kIOReturnSuccess)
{
//Add the work you need to do without
// the system sleeping here.
success = IOPMAssertionRelease(assertionID);
//The system will be able to sleep again.
}
Note that you can only stop idle time sleep, not sleep triggered by the user.
For applications supporting Mac OS X 10.6 and later, use the new IOPMAssertion family of functions. These functions allow other applications and utilities to see your application's desire not to sleep; this is critical to working seamlessly with third party power management software.
Just create an NSTimer that fires a function with this
UpdateSystemActivity(OverallAct);
I'm pretty sure that that's exactly what Caffeine does.

User triggered event in libevent

I am currently writing a multi-threaded application using libevent.
Some events are triggered by IO, but I need a couple of events that are triggered accross threads by the code itself, using event_active().
I have tried to write a simple program that shows where my problem is:
The event is created using event_new(), and the fd set to -1.
When calling event_add(), if a timeout struct is used, the event is later properly handled by event_base_dispatch.
If event_add(ev, NULL) is used instead, it returns 0 (apparently successful), but event_base_dispatch() returns 1 (which means no the event was not properly registered.)
This behavior can be tested using the following code and swapping the event_add lines:
#include <event2/event.h>
#include <unistd.h>
void cb_func (evutil_socket_t fd, short flags, void * _param) {
puts("Callback function called!");
}
void run_base_with_ticks(struct event_base *base)
{
struct timeval one_sec;
one_sec.tv_sec = 1;
one_sec.tv_usec = 0;
struct event * ev1;
ev1 = event_new(base, -1, EV_PERSIST, cb_func, NULL);
//int result = event_add(ev1, NULL);
int result = event_add(ev1, &one_sec);
printf("event_add result: %d\n",result);
while (1) {
result = event_base_dispatch(base);
if (result == 1) {
printf("Failed: event considered as not pending dispite successful event_add\n");
sleep(1);
} else {
puts("Tick");
}
}
}
int main () {
struct event_base *base = event_base_new();
run_base_with_ticks(base);
return 0;
}
Compilation: g++ sample.cc -levent
The thing is, I do not need the timeout, and do not want to use a n-years timeout as a workaround. So if this is not the right way to use user-triggered events, I would like to know how it is done.
Your approach is sound. In Libevent 2.0, you can use event_active() to activate an event from another thread. Just make sure that you use evthread_use_windows_threads() or evthread_use_pthreads() as appropriate beforehand, to tell Libevent to use the right threading library.
As for needing an extra event: in Libevent 2.0 and earlier, an event loop will exit immediately when there are no pending events added. Your best bet there is probably the timeout trick you discovered.
If you don't like that, you can use the internal "event_base_add_virtual" function to tell the event_base that it has a virtual event. This function isn't exported, though, so you'll have to say something like:
void event_base_add_virtual(struct event_base *);
// ...
base = event_base_new();
event_base_add_virtual(base); // keep it from exiting
That's a bit of a hack, though, and it uses an undocumented function, so you'd need to watch out in case it doesn't work with a later version of Libevent.
Finally, this method won't help you now, but there's a patch pending for future versions of Libevent (2.1 and later) to add a new flag to event_base_loop() to keep it from exiting when the loop is out of events. The patch is over on Github; it is mainly waiting for code review, and for a better name for the option.
I just got burned by this with libevent-2.0.21-stable. It is quite clearly a bug. I hope they fix it in a future release. In the meantime, updating the docs to warn us about it would be helpful.
The best workaround seems to be the fake timeout as described in the question.
#nickm, you didn't read the question. His example code uses event_new() like you described; there is a bug in libevent that causes it to fail when using a NULL timeout (but return 0 when you call event_add()).

How to programmatically prevent a Mac from going to sleep?

Is there way to prevent a Mac from going to sleep programmatically using Objective-C? The I/O kit fundamentals section on Apple's dev site tells me that a driver gets notified of an idle / system sleep, but I can't find a way of preventing the system from sleeping. Is it even possible?
I've come across some other solutions using Caffeine, jiggler, sleepless and even AppleScript, but I want to do this in Objective-C. Thanks.
Here is the official Apple documentation (including code snippet):
Technical Q&A QA1340 - How to I prevent sleep?
Quote: Preventing sleep using I/O Kit in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard:
#import <IOKit/pwr_mgt/IOPMLib.h>
// kIOPMAssertionTypeNoDisplaySleep prevents display sleep,
// kIOPMAssertionTypeNoIdleSleep prevents idle sleep
// reasonForActivity is a descriptive string used by the system whenever it needs
// to tell the user why the system is not sleeping. For example,
// "Mail Compacting Mailboxes" would be a useful string.
// NOTE: IOPMAssertionCreateWithName limits the string to 128 characters.
CFStringRef* reasonForActivity= CFSTR("Describe Activity Type");
IOPMAssertionID assertionID;
IOReturn success = IOPMAssertionCreateWithName(kIOPMAssertionTypeNoDisplaySleep,
kIOPMAssertionLevelOn, reasonForActivity, &assertionID);
if (success == kIOReturnSuccess)
{
// Add the work you need to do without
// the system sleeping here.
success = IOPMAssertionRelease(assertionID);
// The system will be able to sleep again.
}
For older OSX version, check the following:
Technical Q&A QA1160 - How can I prevent system sleep while my application is running?
Quote: Example usage of UpdateSystemActivity (the canonical way for < 10.6)
#include <CoreServices/CoreServices.h>
void
MyTimerCallback(CFRunLoopTimerRef timer, void *info)
{
UpdateSystemActivity(OverallAct);
}
int
main (int argc, const char * argv[])
{
CFRunLoopTimerRef timer;
CFRunLoopTimerContext context = { 0, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL };
timer = CFRunLoopTimerCreate(NULL, CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent(), 30, 0, 0, MyTimerCallback, &context);
if (timer != NULL) {
CFRunLoopAddTimer(CFRunLoopGetCurrent(), timer, kCFRunLoopCommonModes);
}
/* Start the run loop to receive timer callbacks. You don't need to
call this if you already have a Carbon or Cocoa EventLoop running. */
CFRunLoopRun();
CFRunLoopTimerInvalidate(timer);
CFRelease(timer);
return (0);
}
Apple's Q&A1340 replaces Q&A1160. The latest Q&A answers the question "Q: How can my application get notified when the computer is going to sleep or waking from sleep? How do I prevent sleep?"
Listing 2 of Q&A1340:
#import <IOKit/pwr_mgt/IOPMLib.h>
// kIOPMAssertionTypeNoDisplaySleep prevents display sleep,
// kIOPMAssertionTypeNoIdleSleep prevents idle sleep
//reasonForActivity is a descriptive string used by the system whenever it needs
// to tell the user why the system is not sleeping. For example,
// "Mail Compacting Mailboxes" would be a useful string.
// NOTE: IOPMAssertionCreateWithName limits the string to 128 characters.
CFStringRef* reasonForActivity= CFSTR("Describe Activity Type");
IOPMAssertionID assertionID;
IOReturn success = IOPMAssertionCreateWithName(kIOPMAssertionTypeNoDisplaySleep,
kIOPMAssertionLevelOn, reasonForActivity, &assertionID);
if (success == kIOReturnSuccess)
{
//Add the work you need to do without
// the system sleeping here.
success = IOPMAssertionRelease(assertionID);
//The system will be able to sleep again.
}
Note that you can only stop idle time sleep, not sleep triggered by the user.
For applications supporting Mac OS X 10.6 and later, use the new IOPMAssertion family of functions. These functions allow other applications and utilities to see your application's desire not to sleep; this is critical to working seamlessly with third party power management software.
Just create an NSTimer that fires a function with this
UpdateSystemActivity(OverallAct);
I'm pretty sure that that's exactly what Caffeine does.

Objective C: Get notifications about a user's idle state

My cocoa app runs background tasks, which I would like to stop when the user becomes idle (no keyboard/mouse input) and then resume when the user becomes active again. Is there a way to register for idle-state notifications?
In case you can't link to Carbon (ie. you want to compile x86_64 bit binary) you can wrap this function (which returns current idle time in seconds resolution as double - CFTimeInterval) in a timer:
#include <IOKit/IOKitLib.h>
CFTimeInterval CFDateGetIdleTimeInterval() {
mach_port_t port;
io_iterator_t iter;
CFTypeRef value = kCFNull;
uint64_t idle = 0;
CFMutableDictionaryRef properties = NULL;
io_registry_entry_t entry;
IOMasterPort(MACH_PORT_NULL, &port);
IOServiceGetMatchingServices(port, IOServiceMatching("IOHIDSystem"), &iter);
if (iter) {
if ((entry = IOIteratorNext(iter))) {
if (IORegistryEntryCreateCFProperties(entry, &properties, kCFAllocatorDefault, 0) == KERN_SUCCESS && properties) {
if (CFDictionaryGetValueIfPresent(properties, CFSTR("HIDIdleTime"), &value)) {
if (CFGetTypeID(value) == CFDataGetTypeID()) {
CFDataGetBytes(value, CFRangeMake(0, sizeof(idle)), (UInt8 *) &idle);
} else if (CFGetTypeID(value) == CFNumberGetTypeID()) {
CFNumberGetValue(value, kCFNumberSInt64Type, &idle);
}
}
CFRelease(properties);
}
IOObjectRelease(entry);
}
IOObjectRelease(iter);
}
return idle / 1000000000.0;
}
You'll need to link your code to IOKit.framework
There's a Carbon API that will send a notification when there hasn't been a user event after a certain duration called EventLoopIdleTimer. Uli Kusterer has written a Cocoa wrapper for here (look for UKIdleTimer).
If you want something lower level, you may be able to implement the behavior you want with a combination of timers and the CoreGraphics function CGEventSourceSecondsSinceLastEventType (available in <CoreGraphics/CGEventSource.h>).
Apple's Technical Q&A QA1340 Registering and unregistering for sleep and wake notifications may be what you are looking for.
If you need more control than NSWorkspaceWillSleepNotification (Listing 1), use I/O Kit and register to receive power notifications (Listing 3).
I used a different approach.
Subclassing UIApplication I override the sendEvent method filtering touches (actually you can filter any kind of event, acceleration, touches, etc.).
Using a shared variable and a background timer I managed the "idle".
Every time the user touch the screen the variable is set with current timeInterval (current time).
The timer fire method checks for the elapsed time since last touch, if greater than the threshold (in my case was around 90seconds) you can POST your own notification.
I used this simple approach to create a custom set of apps that after some idle time automatically call the "screensaver" app.
Nothing clever, it just do the job.
Hope that helps.