Question 281005 in Debian Question posted in
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Debian – Cannot read keyboard in a loop in Python

I need a Python script to read arrow keys and react to them.

As a first test:

import keyboard
import time

while True:
 if keyboard.is_pressed("i"):
  print("up")
 if keyboard.is_pressed("k"):
  print("down")
 time.sleep(0.1)

It never prints "up" but, prints characters:

i
i
j
^[[A
^[[D
^[[C

I run the script in debian terminal:

sudo python3 test.py

I expect up or down to show up in the terminal.

What am I missing?

Tags:

2

Answers


  1. 0

    You’re trying to use the keyboard library, but the library might not be capturing key events correctly. To detect arrow key presses, you can use the curses library instead.

    Like this:

    import curses

stdscr = curses.initscr()
curses.cbreak()
stdscr.keypad(1)

try:
    while True:
        key = stdscr.getch()
        if key == ord('i'):
            print("up")
        elif key == ord('k'):
            print("down")

finally:
    curses.endwin()

    Also to run the script, you don’t need to use sudo. Just execute python3 test.py.

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  2. 0

    Try this:

    import keyboard

def on_key_event(e):
    if e.event_type == keyboard.KEY_DOWN:
        if e.name == 'i':
            print('up')
        elif e.name == 'j':
            print('down')

keyboard.on_press(on_key_event)

keyboard.wait('esc')  # exit key

keyboard.unhook_all()
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