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Planning Realising Roboducks 3D mouse Cintiq?

Discussion in 'Modding' started by asura, 26 Oct 2011.

  1. asura

    asura jack of all trades

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    First off, I've cleared this with Roboduck I wouldn't dream of steeling his phenomenal idea without his permission. Having said that, I am going to file off the serial numbers, play about, and make it my own.

    Secondly, this will be a slow project, the main factors being the cost of a 9x12" wacom tablet - even second hand they're a bit pricey, sorting out capacitive control - my brother's an electronics engineer so he'll be helping with this, and cutting a sheet of glass to the correct shape - diamond hand saws at the ready!

    So, first off here's an image of RoboDucks winning competition entry... [​IMG]

    I've already earmarked a 15" Dell screen, and a 9x12" Wacom tablet (i.e. not bought them yet...), I've got my SpacePilot with a broken screen, and a track ball I may use - or may upgrade.

    So what else is necessary?

    Capacitive switches; at least 16 to replace the push button switches on the SpacePilot, possibly more function keys thrown into the mix. The switches themselves will just be bit's of aluminium/copper foil under the glass, the trick is in having a suitable controller. I've found a couple of possible products which my brother is looking at and planning over for me - it could be that for cap switches that are replacing existing buttons it'll be just foil, resistor and capacitor - but it could be quite complex...

    Macro/control/aux screen; this is proving a small hassle, there are plenty of devices with the size of screen I'd ideally want, however they tend to be prohibitively expensive so I'm currently looking at other sized screens and other options generally - see below.
    [​IMG]

    Glass fibre; for the body work... no problem in obtaining or making a mould.

    Aluminium sheet; for edging, I hate bending aluminium!

    Possibly a second GPU; if I can get the aux screen to run off usb this won't be necessary, though I've got my eyes on a couple of Nvidia210's just in case.

    Toughened glass; shouldn't be any problem getting the size of sheet I want, then I can start cutting it to size/shape, don't expect to see the glass till everything else is finalised.

    Oh, and anything else that may pop up along the way - display adapters, microprocessor control, and all the unforeseen problems it'll undoubtedly kick up along the process.
     
  2. logonui

    logonui Minimodder

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    I'll be watching this one! Subbed :D
     
  3. GuilleAcoustic

    GuilleAcoustic Ook ? Ook !

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    Nice project that'll be following closely. I'm considering selling my Wacom Intuos 2 A4 USB (9" x 12"). I bought it in 2003 and barely used it (less than 10 times, for a texturing project at school). It is in perfect condition obviously :D. Tell me if you are interested :thumb:.

    I'll probably buy a Bamboo pen instead, due to space restriction on my desk.
     
    Last edited: 26 Oct 2011
  4. jrs77

    jrs77 Modder

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    I've got a Bamboo Pen&Touch lying around. Not worth the money imho, allthough it makes for an excellent touchpad to browse the web.

    The only way for me to draw something by hand is to draw it directly onto the surface I'm looking at. So either I'm going for a cheap solution using a tablet or I'll save up for a Wacom Cintiq 24HD :cough:
     
  5. GuilleAcoustic

    GuilleAcoustic Ook ? Ook !

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    Well this won't be for drawing, but for colorizing. I always draw on paper --> scan. To be honest, I cannot draw with a tablet, definitly not the same than paper + pen (especially since you don't look at your support), and that's why I barely used it.

    Tell me if you want it Asura ... I'll charge you only for the postage (I can't ask anything else for an almost 10 years old peripheral, even if barely used and in mint condition).
     
  6. DeafGamer2015

    DeafGamer2015 Minimodder

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    Subbed! Watching this! If this is finished.. I would totally buy one!! Someone PM Roboduck!!! lol
     
  7. asura

    asura jack of all trades

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    Desk space has been (and still is) a bit of an issue for me too... I'll have a little think about it; the I2's got half the resolution of the I3 (it's still 2540 lines per inch - so not to be sniffed at) which I'm used to we'll see how everything else progresses first - you might decide to turn it into your own Cintiq...

    If I do take you up on your most generous offer, would you be interested in swapping for an I3 A6Wide which would be made redundant? It maps almost perfectly to a 16:10 monitor, in pretty good but not quite perfect condition having had a moderate amount of use over the last 4/5 years; good for doodling, touching up, and might work to your needs... When not in use it acts as a wrist support for my keyboard, which I find the perfect drawing distance.
     
  8. THP Dan

    THP Dan What's a Dremel?

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    Realy like it!

    Check out the picaxe M2 series for captive buttons ;)
    got a few for my upcoming project and they are amazing.
     
  9. asura

    asura jack of all trades

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    Thanks for the link, that looks really good; I'll point my little brother at it over the weekend. If it's any help to you (though it sounds like you're sorted) MPR121 was what I was looking at but it would mean getting 2/3 boards (or more - eek) for this project.

    Whereas the 40x2 chip looks like it could handle all my needs in one unit... though maybe not... the X2's can only do one task at a time, so no good for multiple depressions? So it would be the 20M2 which has, 11... or is it that it can use multiple depressions but to only... do... something...Oh I'll get my brother to check it out! Thanks much for the pointer!
     
  10. Editor22

    Editor22 E22 | Hex-Gear

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    You've most likely seen this already but this thread sent sent me on a bit of a tablet search engine frenzy :D

    http://www.tabletmod.com/

    Figured it may help :p fell in love with roboduck's design and really glad its going to be coming to fruition
     
  11. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    Tricky. The size and resolution of the drawing tablet needs to correspond exactly to the size and resolution of the TFT screen that goes under it. Should be possible though.
     
  12. asura

    asura jack of all trades

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    Yea, it *should* fit exactly - as Ed22 pointed out there's even a company made it their business producing kits, but I'd rather attack it from my own direction (even if that is arse backwards:p) and if I get unusable strips at an edge or edges, it's not the end of the world. I'm taking a leaf out of the more haphazard approach of bongofish

    However a little bit of digging and thinking and I'll be dumping the XGA Dell I was thinking of (good job I hadn't bought it eh) and getting a UXGA screen, it'll as much as quadruple the cost, but for such a close working distance I don't want to be seeing the edges of pixels all the time.

    Not even 24H and already things are chopping and changing...
     
  13. jrs77

    jrs77 Modder

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    Those DIY pen-tablets look interesting, but they're still darn expensive :sigh:
     
  14. GuilleAcoustic

    GuilleAcoustic Ook ? Ook !

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    It seams it's harder than I tought to make a simple cintiq (w/o the 3D mouse). Anout the size and res matching ... the Intuos2 shortcut keys are sensitive and part of the sensitive area (accessible only with the pen. I do not know if it is an issue for you or if you need real physical button like those on the intuos3 to replace them with sensitive ones around the 3D mouse area.
     
  15. Nanosec

    Nanosec absit iniuria verbis

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    subbed......but one question, if you are going to be playing about with a design made by 'Roboduck' don't you think you should change your profile image to something other than the 'no duck' one you have now?
     
  16. Cheapskate

    Cheapskate Insane? or just stupid?

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    Looks promising.:D
     
  17. asura

    asura jack of all trades

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    Just a quick update - ordered the monitor a 1600x1200 15" IPS from an IBM laptop and a controller card to translate DVI to LVDS, once I'm satisfied that this fairly crucial part is working I'll move on to purchasing and ripping appart a tablet etcetera.

    THP Dan, I mentioned the word(s?) PICAXE to my little brother who practically crossed himself and threw holy water over me - apparently it's a crippling thing to do to an IC and closed source to boot and I'll 99% be using an IC with Arduino's code loaded working on a custom PCB (or the Arduino mega... maybe)... The I2C board that I looked out was apparently unsuitable too, but in a more subtle way. He's buying a standard Arduino board to have a general play about with, and to test capacitive actuators for me.

    It may be Roboducks design, but I'm still not a duck.
     
    Last edited: 31 Oct 2011
  18. GuilleAcoustic

    GuilleAcoustic Ook ? Ook !

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  19. asura

    asura jack of all trades

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    That looks very cool; not enough sensor pins on it for what I'm doing, but might end up stacking a few of them, though it's looking likely it'll be a single larger IC.

    Another very minor update I'm afraid, monitor arrived so I've had a bit of a play about with it, but don't have any screwdrivers small enough to open it up (yet) so all I've done so far is play about with depths.

    My 4x6" Intuos3 still gets signal through the monitor (currently 6mm but I reckon I can shave over .5mm off that, maybe a whole 1mm) and a sheet of foam board (that's an additional 4mm - I'm planning on using 3mm glass going to have to have a play about with my fridge shelves before I know for sure) I don't know how well pressure sensitivity works at this increased thickness though, as the foam board isn't hard enough to use that way. However, barring that, it's good news so far.

    Additionally, I opened up my Intuos to have a look at it's guts, see how much thinner I could make it, the answer is very. The working parts seem to be all on a single sided pcb of 2mm thickness with it's tallest component standing at 2.75mm high. Behind the PCB is a 2mm thick plastic insulating sheet (white) and then a sheet of metallic backing, possibly a mu-metal and is about 0.1mm thick. But it's in the top that I can make a saving on space, it's a whole 7.5mm thick so I can cut down 4mm there.

    The "bad" news it that I seem to have borked the touch strip - weather the cable got a tug and I broke a wire in the ribbon, or if I just put the ribbon back in the wrong way around, we'll have to wait and see - as I can't be bothered opening it up again right now for such a minor piece of functionality which (if I'm honest) I would catch my wrist on and unwittingly zoom, far more often that I would intentionally use it.

    So the condensed version reads a bit like - monitor arrived, Intuos works through it and top plate, with luck the finished piece shouldn't be much thicker than 18mm - Intuos3 is 14.5mm.
     
  20. GuilleAcoustic

    GuilleAcoustic Ook ? Ook !

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    I'm glad this is moving forward :) ... you are tempting me with your project. Maybe I'll take my Intuos2 out of the cabinet :lol:
     

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