KeyEvent Display

Alexandros Schillings

About this app

Once, I was playing with a number of Chinese tablets and trying different ROMs on them as they are technically the same hardware (HSG X5A variants).

I've had some problems getting the hard buttons to work though, so I wrote this application to detect key events and print them out. It will print out the following:

KeyEvents: The KeyEvents as Android understands them (KeyUp, KeyDown, KeyLongPress, KeyMultiple)

LogCat: Any relevant messages in logcat. Its filtered based on keywords declared in arrays.xml

Kernel: Any relevant messages in the kernel log. Its filtered based on keywords declared in arrays.xml. Kernel log parsing needs root.

The three checkboxes at the top control what information will be displayed.

This is a personal debug tool, but I hope it will be of some use to someone else.

No Ads.

Notes
--------------
While the application is running, the only "hard" keys which should work is "Home" and power. All others will produce their keycodes.

The SU request is to read the kernel log, so I can check if any keyevents are thrown by the kernel.

The location of keylayout files in Android is /system/usr/keylayout.

Kernel log parsing needs root

Both logcat and kernel log monitoring will only display lines containing words from two arrays in arrays.xml (i.e. you need to recompile the app to change them at the moment)

Currently the filters are:

Logcat:
|-HwGPIOE->GPDA
|-keycode
|-keycharacter

Kernel:
|-HwGPIOE->GPDA
|-keycode
|-keycharacter

Permissions
--------------
READ_LOGS: Used to access the Logcat log.
WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE: Used to write the exported data to the SD card.

This application is open source. The code can be found here: https://github.com/alt236/KeyEvent-Display---Android

Ratings and reviews

As a developer, this app is indeed very useful to me. But, the ability to change font size should be included. Also, it displays only the key codes, without the names. It would have been better if the key names could be displayed.

It does the job perfectly. It helped me determine specific button keycodes so that I could customize the buttons I'm Tasker and various other apps.

21APR19: Awesome. Found my hardware key mapping easily with this app. No advertising. Brilliant.

What's new

* v1.0.0: Redesign, added Android TV support.