Watching for inputs from multiple sources concurrently

[woooee]

I want the device to both wait for a UDP packet, and also keep an eye on an IR signal

Multiprocessing is one way to do more than one thing at a time https://pymotw.com/3/multiprocessing/basics.html

and wait on the button press

Keep this in the program, i.e. not a separate process, as the program controls the terminal and input. A somewhat funky example from my toolbox that uses a Tkinter Button to terminate, and hopefully will help.

import tkinter as tk
import time
from multiprocessing import Process

class TestClass():
    def test_f(self, sleep_time=0.5):
        """ a simple counter function that simulates
            a separate process 
        """
        ctr = 0
        while True:
            print(ctr)
            ctr += 1
            time.sleep(sleep_time)

    def tk_quit(self):
        """ this function just waits for a button click and then
            exits/returns, allowing the rest of this program to execute
        """
        root=tk.Tk()
        tk.Button(root, text="Quit", command=root.quit,
                  width=10, bg="orange").grid()
        root.mainloop()

if __name__ == '__main__':
     ## run function in the background
     CT=TestClass()

     ## simulate 2 processes running different things
     ## start as many processes as you want
     p1=Process(target=CT.test_f)
     p1.start()
     p2=Process(target=CT.test_f, args=(0.75,))
     p2.start()

     CT.tk_quit()
     print("terminating processes")
     for p in [p1, p2]:
         if p.is_alive():
             p.terminate()
         p.join()