EventMachine (EM) can respond to keyboard events. This gives your event-driven programs the ability to respond to input from local users. Programming EM to handle keyboard input in Ruby is simplicity itself. Just use EventMachine#open_keyboard, and supply the name of a Ruby module or class that will receive the input: require 'rubygems' require 'eventmachine' module MyKeyboardHandler def receive_data keystrokes puts "I received the following data from the keyboard: #{keystrokes}" end end EM.run { EM.open_keyboard(MyKeyboardHandler) } If you want EM to send line-buffered keyboard input to your program, just include the LineText2 protocol module in your handler class or module: require 'rubygems' require 'eventmachine' module MyKeyboardHandler include EM::Protocols::LineText2 def receive_line data puts "I received the following line from the keyboard: #{data}" end end EM.run { EM.open_keyboard(MyKeyboardHandler) } As we said, simplicity itself. You can call EventMachine#open_keyboard at any time while the EM reactor loop is running. In other words, the method invocation may appear anywhere in an EventMachine#run block, or in any code invoked in the #run block.