adiwan (adiwan)'s status on Monday, 22-Jul-24 16:01:42 UTC

adiwan

I bought a micro controller 6 years ago and hadn't a need for it yet, until now. It shocked me that the price doubled since then. It's an Atmega32u4 that has a male USB connector, also known as a Atmega32u4 Beetle, or BadUSB on some sites. I used the micro controller to emulate a mouse that wiggles the cursor periodically in order to prevent the locking of the screen when idle. The laptop from the client has locked down pretty much everything that could be otherwise be a workaround in software.
It took me several attempts to make it work, because I was too optimistic with my gentle cursor wiggling. Windows' threshold is quite generous for its idle detection. At first I wiggled a pixel back and forth once every 5 minutes and it developed to twice a minute and twice a small figure 8 in a 3x3 pixel window. I think it is done to filter out some crappy mouse sensors that are very noisy. In practice it's not that distracting and the wiggling imperceptible when the mouse is actually used.