Project Patchouli: Open-source electromagnetic drawing tablet hardware

As a software engineer, seeing hardware projects like this makes me want to go back to school and pick up a few electrical engineering courses. The hardware space just seems to unlock so much (honestly blown away with the LCD retrofit at the end of the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igVscvWAR1s )

I've played with simple electronics on the arduino and raspberry pi platforms but this is a whole new level. Anyone gone down this path? Something you would recommend?

https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Patchouli_Knowledge

And then yeah he's playing a Touhou rearrangement in the project intro video. "Original: ZUN".

I wholeheartedly support weebs who create useful open-source electronics and share them with the world.

The Youtube introduction video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igVscvWAR1s) is a great explanation of the tech and the end where he retrofits it into a Panasonic CF RZ is wild.

Treating documentation like an interface, not a manual As of late, I’ve reviewed documentation less as “instructions” and more like an interface. ~

Users find it hard to use documentation just as they find it hard to use a product with a bad interface.

It changed the way I write, for example: Headings are like boundaries to an API. I prioritize example before explanation. If it lowers cognitive load, repetition is warranted. I made the following changes: Even if it may feel like it has been too short, I hope you will not mind the sections. Even better, try to remove everything except for one idea per page.

Try not to write for the expert, write for the most confused reader. I’ll ask you the following: Do you see docs as some sort of ux too? How do you test docs, without watching someone live?

Some of Wacom's tablets can be used with both the pen or with your finger (acting like a touchpad).

Anyone have any idea whether the touchpad part could be made open-source? Or even some closed sourced off-the-shelf solution that could be integrated with the above?

EDIT: There is a Canadian company that has recently released an open source trackpad called the Ploopy Trackpad [1].

[1] https://github.com/ploopyco/trackpad https://ploopy.co/trackpad/

Isn't this technique encumbered by patents? Or have they expired?

Anyway I'd be interested in the implementation of a 3D mouse also.

As an aside, anyone here uses drawing tablets for work? I got a cheap Wacom tablets and found it super useful, for sketching ideas or understanding something before starting to implement new code.

This seems very similar to another open-source tablet effort, which went a step further and designed a Hall effect sensor-based tablet: https://github.com/pompyboard/pompyboard

The creator of it has showcased the prototype at an osu!* streamer's channel (since low-latency absolute positioning devices are highly desired for playing osu!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1afJ7OpacU

* that is osu! (sic) rhythm game, not to be confused with OSU universities

Beautiful! Added to list of projects! Retrofit into screen of old 27» 2009 imac that is run by a raspberry and drived by a screen driver.

I love the cute diagrams in the `Scan Rate Optimization` section.

Very well written reverse engineering documents.

This is such a great project! I want one!

Someone donate to this guy so he can upgrade his 20 y/o Thinkpad!

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Awesome