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Is there an application for Ubuntu, that would behave like KidKeyLock for Windows?

That is, upon activation, it prevents any keypress from working, until a specific sequence ("password") is typed, but without locking the screen or mouse.

The point of this is to allow a kid (baby/toddler) to pound away on the keyboard, but leaving the the screen open and mouse activity unlocked, allowing the parent to browse Faceb AskUb Very Important Parenting information sites at the same time.

Related: If there are no such applications, any idea how difficult would it be to code one with Python? (If this is the case, I will of course ask further from StackOverflow...)

Ilari Kajaste
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3 Answers3

9

Lock Keyboard For Baby (lk4b)

You need to have libgtk2-perl installed to run this.

To run the script, download the file on the linked page to a suitable location then run the command:

perl FILE

replacing FILE with the location of the downloaded file.

For information on available options run:

perl FILE --help
Community
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dv3500ea
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  • It should be noted that this does not prevent modifier keys from affecting mouse events. E.g. even when keyboard is locked, if ctrl is held down mouse wheel will zoom the browser window, instead of scrolling down. (Though the refernce software I used (KidKeyLock) behaves the same.) – Ilari Kajaste Jun 24 '11 at 11:40
  • In Ubuntu 14.04 I also added a lk4b-launcher to Unity dashboard: http://askubuntu.com/questions/76342/how-can-i-add-a-bash-script-to-the-unity-launcher – DmitrySandalov Jan 24 '15 at 12:07
2

A non-software solution I'm currently using is a Logitech wireless keyboard (K320 I think) that has an unobtrusive power switch (ostensibly to save batteries).

A surreptitious flick of the switch and the kid has no idea it's your mouse clicks that are causing the changes on the screen and not their banging on the keyboard.

Same goes for the matching mouse.

Tom
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1

xtrlock

I'm using xtrlock which locks keyboard and mouse pointer changes to a padlock. After entering your already common user password, the input devices are released again.

Tom Kuschel
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