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Detect Keyboard Input Matlab

I have a simple question, although it's harder than it seems; I couldn't find the answer on the interwebs :O

I'm writing a script in Matlab. What I want to do is the following:

  • When I press the esc key, I want a helpdialogue to pop up, so my script pauses. (So when I press esc, I want to stop the whole script to run so that the car (which im writing the script for) stops driving)

How do I do this? How can I say to Matlab: When I press esc, do this...

Thanks for your time guys!

EDIT: It's no option to implement something which awaits the keypress. Im writing a script for a driving car. It just has to drive around basically, but when I press esc for example, it should stop driving. So the script just has to run, untill I press the esc key; then the script has to pause.

like image 493
Earless Avatar asked Mar 03 '14 11:03

Earless


1 Answers

KeyPressFcn is good because it forces you to write event-driven code. Which is generally a good idea! However, if KeyPressFcn doesn't seem right for you, for example if you must keep running in a loop, and you just want to poll whether a key has been pressed, I found this solution buried in the matlab website:

get(gcf,'CurrentCharacter')

Then you could set this property to a blank, and poll it as required. e.g:

finish=false;
set(gcf,'CurrentCharacter','@'); % set to a dummy character
while ~finish
  % do things in loop...

  % check for keys
  k=get(gcf,'CurrentCharacter');
  if k~='@' % has it changed from the dummy character?
    set(gcf,'CurrentCharacter','@'); % reset the character
    % now process the key as required
    if k=='q', finish=true; end
  end
end

This worked well for me in 2014b. The downside is that the graphics window needs to be focused to receive the key events.

like image 52
Sanjay Manohar Avatar answered Oct 02 '22 08:10

Sanjay Manohar