Turning a Touchpad -> Cheap Tablet (Can it be done?)

Triple_Dude · 10-01-2007, 02:02 AM

Okay, I stumbled upon this vid last week:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSNsocSu4-U

And that had me thinking... Is there any way to turn a touchpad into a cheap tablet? With some sort of pen that simulates the conductivity of hour hands (I assume that's how touchpads work)?

And how did the person in the video do it? (I tried replicating it, but I have no idea what kind of conditions has to be met... I ate chips without wiping my hands and picked up a battery and tried writing on my touchpad. Nothing happened).

bossier330 · 10-01-2007, 08:08 AM

It's not the chips that do it haha. A touchpad works by sensing where a charge builds up between the grid under the surface of the pad and ur finger. (The body is a mild capacitor). The negative terminal of a 1.5V battery works the same way.

manu251125 · 10-01-2007, 08:15 AM

you have to use the negative side of the battery.the positive side doesnt work

Triple_Dude · 10-01-2007, 08:48 PM

Ohhh... Okay, that's cool, haha. I'm going to try it out then

.

Nalada · 10-02-2007, 01:14 PM

Now what I would really like to do is use my Sony Clie (Palm OS) as a tablet for Chinese character input. The Chinese character recognition in Vista seems to work well but it is a pain entering the characters with the mouse. The PDA screen is ideal in that it is a reasonable size for character input and it shows you the strokes you have drawn like writing on paper (and unlike many tablets).
I would have thought it should be possible - a Bluetooth app?

Nalada · 10-08-2007, 10:24 PM

Well - I found there was software:

From an archived Palm news release at http://www.palm.com/sg/company/pr/ar...2001_0208.html

* GOGOPen
GOGOPen's HandFly is a software application that allows Palm handhelds to be used as a handwriting recognition device for a PC. HandFly uses a Palm handheld's synchronisation cable to transmit written characters "on the fly" onto the user's PC.

* PenPower
Consumers can use the entire handheld screen to write English or Chinese characters with PenPower's recently released PenPower Writer handwriting recognition solution. PenPower Writer can also transform a handheld into a handwriting recognition pad for immediate input of handwriting, drawings and signatures onto a PC.

The former seems to exist at:
Free GOGOPen(Full) V1.5 for PalmOS 3.5 to 5.x Download
but it may be a dodgy site
and possibly a V2.1 from a Chinese driver site that Google is very strongly advising me not to visit for my own safety. In any case it doesn't look that exciting.

I have found and installed PenPower (unfortunately the documentation is in Chinese) but it looks like to send the info to the PC I also need to find their PenPower PalmPad software - which I have not yet.