The GPIO keypad input

We have seen how we can monitor inputs on the GPIO to launch applications and control the Raspberry Pi; however, sometimes we need to control third-party programs. Using the uInput library, we can emulate key presses from a keyboard (or even mouse movement) to control any program using our own custom hardware.

For more information about using uInput, visit http://tjjr.fi/sw/python-uinput/.

Getting ready

Perform the following steps to install uInput:

1. First we need to download uInput:

   You will need to download the uInput Python library from Github (~50 KB) using the following commands:

   wget https://github.com/tuomasjjrasanen/python-uinput/archive/master.zip
   unzip master.zip
   

   The library will unzip to a directory called python-uinput-master.

   Once completed, you can remove the ZIP file using the following command:

   rm master.zip
   

2. Install the required packages (if you have installed them already, the apt-get command will ignore them) using the following commands:

   sudo apt-get install...