python threads: newbie question

[Lonnie Princehouse]

It's pretty easy to start a thread that performs a task 
every few seconds with the threading.Thread class. 
See http://www.python.org/doc/lib/thread-objects.html

Here's a very basic example:


import threading, time

def thread_loop():
    while(1):
        # do your mouse/parallel port polling here
        time.sleep(5.0)  # sleep for the requisite interval

poll_thread = threading.Thread(None, thread_loop)
poll_thread.setDaemon(1)  # Without this, your program will hang on exit
poll_thread.start()

# ... and continue with the rest of your program