Problem with "Synergy"

Hi!

I’m using WhatPulse for quite some time, now i’m beginning to use a tool named “Synergy”, for usage of several screens with one input device. I now have the Problem that, when typing on the remote screen, the keys are counted neither on the local, nor on the remote screen. Did anyone have a similar Problem and a solution for that? Who can i ask of the WhatPulse-Team about what i can do there?

best regards,
private_meta

I also have the same problem, and upon searching the WhatPulse forums for “synergy”, this is the only topic that came up.

I, however, am running Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon) as my host machine, and Windows Vista on my laptop remote machine. WhatPulse is installed on my Vista machine, and when I share the keyboard and mouse that are connected to my Linux box, keystrokes and clicks on the laptop do not count toward my WhatPulse.

Just to clarify, Synergy is a program that allows the sharing of input devices (mouse and keyboard) through TCP/IP networking, thus allowing you to control multiple computers with a single mouse and keyboard, much alike to having multiple monitors.

Any help or speculation on this matter would be greatly appreciated!

This sounds kinda interesting. And I wonder how I missed this topic over 6 months ago :frowning:

Now… how exactly does Synergy work? Is the keyboard connected to one computer as the ‘primary’ computer, and then it controls a secondary computer as well? How is it all physically set up?

Because I’ve got a hunch that you would need to have the keyboard directly connected to the Vista machine. I don’t think whatpulse can hook to a keyboard that’s not physically attached to the computer. But I’m just speculating - I have no idea how Synergy works, yet.

Hey, I have this problem too.

This is like a KVM switch, except over TCP/IP and doesn’t do video switching.

So for example, I have a vista machine with a mouse and a keyboard and a screen, and an Ubuntu machine with a screen but no mouse and keyboard. The mouse and keyboard on the Vista machine moves/types on the Ubuntu one over TCP/IP.

If someone could work out why this stops WhatPulse from tracking mouseclicks/keypresses, that’d be fantastic! :slight_smile:

That might be the trick - if it’s done over TCP/IP, then whatpulse might not be able to hook up to the keyboard like it’s supposed to. I’ll show the thread to wasted and see what he thinks, but I’ve got a feeling this is what’s happening.

Hmm. The question is, why does the Vista machine NOT see the keyboard presses anymore? Synergy is sending them over to the other machine but it very cleverly stops them from being seen by WhatPulse.
I guess you need to “hook in” to the keyboard presses at a lower level; for example when using the second screen, pressing WinKey + L still locks the host machine, so obviously Windows is still listening to the keypresses.

Bah, where’s my Linux version? :frowning:

Any updates on this? I am not using Synergy, but something similar called Input Director. The host is my ThinkPad and the PC I control is my HTPC which I do all my gaming on, So I miss out on a ton of keys.

So, brought this up in a discussion in IRC earlier today, figured it might be a good idea to bump this topic and see if we can get some things figured out…
Here’s a link to Synergy:

hxxp://code.google.com/p/synergy-plus/ Due to the fact that I just registered, I can't post proper links... So just change the hxxp to http in the url

Feel free to contact me directly if you would like help testing WP with this, as I use it at work extensively, having two, sometimes three, “client” computers, and would really like for all the typing I do to be counted, as opposed to just the work done on the “server” computer.

Cheers,
Kyrin

AFAIK it’s not possible since the hook WhatPulse uses is different to that which is sent through remote screens.

Okay, so that makes sense to me for not being able to capture the keys as they are being received on the “client” by WhatPulse running on the “client”. However, what should prevent the “server” from being able to capture the keys that are being typed and then being sent to a “client” since they’re still being typed physically on the “server”… I assume that there’s some hook that Synergy uses to capture and then redirect the keys to another computer when the focus is on another computer, but WhatPulse should be able to capture and count those keypresses prior to Synergy… Surely there’s some kind of priority…

There are way too many variables for me to even begin to bother debugging this. It’s not because I’m lazy, I just don’t really have the time. Also consider that on some other Remote Desktop systems it works perfectly fine. Perhaps Synergy is placing some kind of hold over the keyhook and thus WhatPulse can’t access it - I really don’t know.

If anyone comes up with a solution I’ll be happy to send out trial version that fix at least the Synergy issue. :slight_smile:

I also use Synergy, and have problems with the mouse and key clicks.
But another thing i see is the mouse movment counter on the server is way to fast When i move around, and its counting on bouth computers.

100meters on server is only 4.74 meters on the client.