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in reply to Remote Controlling Launchcast and with X-10?

Depending on how this Launchcast thing works, there are several approaches:

  1. The easiest approach is to use Win32::GUITest and automate the application (your web browser?) by sending keyboard commands and mouse clicks. This is very fragile, but will always "work" in the sense that the application doesn't have much in the way of detecting whether there is an actual user or a program supplying its input.
  2. A little bit less fragile would be the approach to extract the actual ActiveX embedding-HTML into its own page so you do not have to cope with all the clutter surrounding the player control, or alternatively looking at the various ActiveX hosting applications (Excel, wxPerl) and to host the ActiveX control within that container.
  3. An even more elegant way might be available if the ActiveX actually installs and registers itself with Windows so you can automate it through its COM IDispatch interface via Win32::OLE. The easiest way to check is to open the Excel script editor (Alt-F11) and check the Tools->References for any suspicious control you might be able to link in. This would give you full control over all exported hooks of the ActiveX, provided that there are such exported hooks in the first place.
  4. The hardest way is to sniff the network connection with Net::PCap and then to manually decode the data stream yourself. This will be lots of hard work but in the end you will be liberated from Win32 and the ActiveX control and can connect to Launchcast from wherever you have network and Perl.