Hardware arduino based mouse emulator, preventing screen saver locking (eg. during forensic investigation)
Arduino based hardware mouse emulator, preventing computer screen-saver from kicking in and locking desktop (eg. during forensic investigation).
After installation on hardware device (arduino) and plugging it to computer USB port it registers itself as regular HID mouse. Every few seconds it makes tiny cursor movements, emulating "user activity" and preventing screen-saver from locking up desktop.
apt-get install arduino
.mouse_jiggler.ino
file from this repository.TOOLS > Board > Arduno Micro
or similar) and port where programmer is connected to (TOOLS > Port > ...
).Touching exposed electronics (arduino) with naked hands could damage it. Consider putting it in thermal insulation - this should help with ESD.
We've battle tested it during our internal investigations on Mac OSX. Additionally development stability tests were performed on Debian based Linux distro.
In both cases, it's activation was apparent few seconds after insertion and ScreenSaver hasn't kicked in for more than 48h (weekend memory acquisition).
I am not aware of any running time limitation but I cannot guarantee it.
Device acts as normal HID device (usb mouse) and according system journals are updated with entry of inserting USB device. No other files are created/modified except using already installed USB HID drivers.