Nope. It's the digitizer that doesn't support pressure sensitivity. That's per Finepoint, the manufacturer of the TC1000's digitizer. There have been a couple of threads along these lines already. You can probably find them easily with a search.
I am a new TC1000 owner. Before I bought it, I a
I am a new TC1000 owner. Before I bought it, I already knew that it is not pressure sensitive.
I read a lot of users hoping TC1000 can have a pressure-sensitive tablet. Well, it is probably too late, since the screen is covered with glass material.
But if some company is willing to invest in R&D, I believe it is possible to manufacture a third-party pen for TC1000, a pen with a pressure-sensitive tip and, even better, with an eraser tip at the other end. Notice that whenever you write, the tip of the TC1000 pen retracts a little bit? Just by measuring how far the tip retracts, the pressure applied on the tip can be estimated, and the calculated pressure level can be transmitted to the tablet along with its cursor coordinates. All we need is a new pen and a new driver, and our TC1000 can be as pressure-sensitive as any other tablet pc.
As long as there is enough market, some company may consider manufacturing one. This reminds of how many companies are making accessories for iPAQ Pocket PC.
Nope. It's the digitizer that doesn't support pressure sensitivity. That's per Finepoint, the manufacturer of the TC1000's digitizer. There have been a couple of threads along these lines already. You can probably find them easily with a search.
i asked them. Yes you could put another digitizer there, but it's $ and it voids your guarantee, obviously :)
and the glass has nothing to do with pressure sensitivity.
Yes, the tablet itself is not pressure-sensitive, but there are signals transmitting from the pen tip to the tablet, including the "hover", "tip click" and "pen button click" signals.
Using some workarounds, like multiplexing techniques, there may be ways to smuggle pressure level signals into the existing ones, suppose the new pen itself can calculate pressure levels.
For example, when you hold then pen down, instead of sending a continuous "1", you can send a pulsation of "1"s and "0"s in very short alternations. The tablet will still faithfully pass these signals to the software driver, as if the user was clicking and releasing the pen tip repeatedly very quickly. But then an appropriate driver can interpret the pattern of the alternation, and extract the coordinate and pressure level information out of it.
I believe it is possible. I just don't know if it is financially feasible for the pen manufacturers. When FinePoint indicated their current pressure-sensitive pen doesn't work with TC1000, it doesn't mean there is no other way.
Just like people invented time-division and code-division multiplexing techniques for the cellular networks, or the DSL technology for the analog phone lines, there are always ways to squeeze in extra bits of information thru existing channels. But of course, I am not an electronic engineer. Just me issuing some fancy ideas here.
Hope someone reads this and comes up with something great. Or, have a good laugh.
That may be possible, to send a stream of 8 bits, but that would involve reprogramming the firmware within the pen, and would cut the speed of the pen 8 times, significantly reducing it's effective polling rate to well below the requirements for TabletPC's handwriting function.
There is no way to add pressure sensitivity to the HP without replacing the digitizer and the pen. I've looked over the situation and studied it several times. It isn't reasonably feasible.
mmm.... If we had the sources for the drivers, it might be easier. I don't fancy doing hardware reversing, /especially since i suck in electronics/ :) Hey, we DO have sources for drivers, if some people got the digitizer to work in linux!
<s>Depending on how the digitizer's input is treated before being sent to the computer, it might be possible to receive the z position of the pen. Physically, it is possible(Wacom drivers allow it). Now we only have to know if the finepoint digitizer sends enough info to triangulate the pen's height, or if it's all preprocessed and only sends (x,y) coordinates.... That is, IFF the Z input in Wacom's stuff is not dependant on pressure input, which i believe it isn't, since iirc, it allows for Z input even when not touching the pad.
If we can have Z input with enough precision(i think we can assume it should be comparable to x,y, within an order or so, no?), then depending on the give of the TC's screen, it could work. Either that, or put another more comrpessible layer above the screen.
Yes, it's a hack :)
</s> (no worky :)
If that does not work: It shouldn't be too hard to use a pressure sensitive resistor / condensator to build a FM/AM system. That+a receiver(here comes the hard part) placed on whatever is easiest/best, along with some programming (I have no idea how Windows supports pressure sensitivity, nor if we would have to tack that feature on the original FP drivers or if x,y input and pressure are separable) would make it possible... At the cost of a probably weird looking appendice to the pen :)
Edit: http://www.blueradios.com/ interfaces with rs232; you'd need an analog to digital converter to use that, though.
It has nothing to do with how much "give" a screen has. In fact, a harder glass screen would provide for much better pressure sensitivity accuracy. The amount of pressure sensitivity is determined by the compression of a spring attached to the styli's tip. And the TC1000's pen does have pressure sensitivity, it offers a Z coordinate with a discrimination factor of 2 levels.
The digitizer actually has to accept a wide range of z variables, which it does not. This isn't some fluke, like HPQ just simply forgot to give us pressure sensitive pens. The digitizer was designed to lack such a feature in order to save on the price of the unit. You cannot acceptably or feasibly add pressure sensitivity. It just doesn't work that way. If you wanted pressure sensitivity, you should have bought a Motion.
And it's more than a matter of drivers, it's a matter of understanding the machine language of the translation chip within the pen itself and having the capability to reprogram that chip, along with adding several pieces of hardware that won't fit on the pen's PCB because it was designed to lack those capabilities, there is no contact point to solder them on. Also the digitizer requires much more than simple driver modification. It doesn't cost less because of some arbitrarily contrived market value. The digitizer in the TC1000 costs us less because it cost HPQ less to manufacture it and FinePoint less to design it, which means it has physically fewer components, which means less functionality. If it were so simple as writing new drivers then it would also be as simple as calling FinePoint and asking them for their pressure sensitive capable pen (which they offer), since WindowsXP Tablet Edition has the digitizer drivers and pressure sensitivity built into the OS that you turn on with the tap of a check box. But seeing as how that doesn't add pressure sensitivity, and seeing as how we have had FinePoint representatives post on this forum explaining that pressure sensitivity is impossible without replacing the digitizer, then it's obvious that pressure sensitivity is not an option on the TC1000. Again, you should have bought a Motion if pressure sensitivity is as big a deal to you as you are obviously making it.
How about reading what i posted? I only proposed two ways to simulate pressure sensitivity using the current hardware... i didn't say it was easy, or even practical - i don't currently have enough experience or information to do that kind of assessment(it's probably not, but who knows?).
I like those ideas. Very interesting.
I believe most of the TC1000 owners did their research before they bought it, are in love with it, and don't mind the lack of pressure sensitivity. This thread here is simply doing some brain storming, and hopefully, come up with some hacking ideas that even FinePoint didn't imagine.
I saw a lot of interesting hacks, modifications and creative accessories for Pocket PC platform. The Tablet PC platform is so much more sophisticated, hardware- and software-wise. It is a matter of time before someone starts taking these machines apart and hacking them.
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