Planning Realising Roboducks 3D mouse Cintiq?

[Fredcompany]

Been following this for a while, but I might as well sub Good work so far

[dullonien]

Are you gonna run this off a second dedicated graphics card? Two extra monitors will require that or an AMD eyefinity card. I was thinking about what I'd do if/when I make a cintiq clone, and I'd probably have to swithc my Nvidia 470 for a 6 series Radeon to run my 2 monitors and the tablet monitor. Using mATX, I don't have a second PCI-e slot for a second GPU, unless I upgrade my mobo.

Glad you've got the second monitor sorted. Looking forward to seeing this propperly underway, i.e. things in bits.

[GuilleAcoustic]

arduinos provides LCD controller shield. I think the small lcd will be driven by the µcontroler

[Burnout21]

the only thing i think the concept is missing is a numpad, unless you can figure out a simple touch screen solution on the 6.2in unit.

Solidworks user since 06 and the space pilot and numpad are essential tools not fancy extras, lol!

[GuilleAcoustic]

I do think it's not too complicated to have a numpad on the touch screen.

[asura]

dullonien, these are questions that have been haunting me! I have a few GPU's sitting around (8800GTS, 8800GTX, 9800GTX - none of them stellar but more than good enough for this sort of thing) the big problem with this is that having a second GPU installed lowers the performance of my FX4600, a lot! Having the two cards in dumps SPECviewperf's solidworks testing from 24fps down to under 10fps! This sort of slowdown is unacceptable. Therefore, my usual second monitor (a 15" 4:3 in portrait - which is currently sitting in a draw due to space constraints on my desk) will be replaced with the UXGA, and the 6.2" screen will most likely be run using a USB->VGA converter. I'll probably pick up a second USB->VGA converter for my syncmaster (sentimental old sod I am) once I get everything sorted out and see how it runs... historically it's just been used as a file browser / web browser / toolbox, nothing demanding so it should run ok.

Guile, this is going to be a fully functional (death star!) extra monitor I can think of three or four uses for it and will gladly take in ideas for others; I'm currently thinking RSS / HotKey Map / extents image / print spooler (not that I do so much printing these days) / to-do list that sync's to my phone. And as far as I can tell the LCD boards for the Arduino are simpler creatures...

Number pad was never so essential to me Burnout, first of all learned Autocad (having to hit enter at the end of every damn command!) then had the release of Vectorworks where, yes the number pad played a part, but pretty much the whole keyboard was in use, and now I mostly piddle about with SketchUp where again it's all the keyboard that's in use (well mostly c, a, and r to be honest) with my most used commands mapped to the space pilot.

I can see myself adding a column or two of capacitive switches down the right hand edge as due to the wacom PCB there will be an edge - about an inch roughly won't know for sure till it arrives and I open it up - these will be free keys, hopefully I'll be able to set them up so they can be mapped for different applications at a guess there'll be space for about 15 sensors.

Still not sure if I'll have a mounted trackball or keep it separate...

[Burnout21]

tasty!

Numpad win as i am constantly dimensioning in Solidworks or applying equations to constraints but thats me!

[asura]

Ok, monitor disassembled, the picture bellow (apologies for my bed, it's the second largest area of flat white I have; the other's a bit busy at the moment) shows it in three parts; scrap, back-light, and panel. It's now 2mm thinner, which is nice.



The only problem is that I don't get any response with my little intuows3 through the PCB so I'm going to have to extend the ribbon on the side so that I can fold the PCB up perpendicular with the screen. It's *just* possible that I might be able to squeeze the back-light and the intuos3 PCB in there - in fact it's going to be more an issue of the width of the tablet PCB than the depth... 18 pins in 9mm I'm going to need an exceedingly fine tipped soldering iron... why are things never easy

***Ok, that's a 6" length of ribbon on my farnell list - only another £16 to go before I clear their minimum order ***

***Tablet arrived this morning - it's HUGE! Can't test it / take it apart till Monday but it looks pretty good***

[asura]

Very minor update, for the most part to show that I haven't forgotten about this monster I'm creating. I've opened up the A4 intuos and produced a rough SketchUp model for my own use, the edges are unfortunately wide due to the touch strip and hot-keys on either side, I'm having a think about cutting the PCB, but it'd be an expensive experiment for the sake of 25mm in width that I may put a strip of buttons down.

Playing about with the intuos PCB and the stripped display proved that I definitely need to extend the ribbon, the good news being that I'm now well above Farnells minimum order.

Further research has unearthed this little beauty from Atmel which will make the direct replacement of the push buttons in the space pilot much easier - still looking at more complex IC's for the additional capacitive switches, but it's possible that it'll end up being a bank of these outputting to a mini Arduino.

[Fredcompany]

How are you going to make the capacitive switches (or where are you getting them from)?

[Burnout21]

id forgetten about this little beauty of a project.

[asura]

Those are the capacitive switches linked above... BAH! Atmel doesn't support hot-linking to it's technical documents, sorry about that... thank god for Farnell! That's them, awesome little single-in single-out IC. I'll also probably use a more complex IC will from Cypress - it'll control the number pad and any sliders I might choose to fit in.

[asura]

Another quick update; due to the shear number of PCB's I'm trying to cram into this thing, it has developed a tilt - it's mostly the fault of the inverter for the 15" monitor (height) and the mini-screen's display adapter (it's huge!) This has lead me to having something both thicker and thinner than I first hoped/expected it to be, at it's thickest it'll end up being over 20mm, but at it's thinnest it should be around 10mm, which'll be nice.



The number pad will likely run down the right hand edge or across the top of the screen, it'll almost certainly use a Cypress Capsense Express chip, one of these to be precise. That'll be on yet another PCB, but I should have space for it now...

It would all be so much thinner/better/easier if I had the knowledge to produce all the controllers and gubbins from scratch rather than having a load of separate solutions jammed in together.

The capacitive pads themselves will be attached to the underside of the glass in a manor not dissimilar to the process that this guy is going through, either that, or I'll get some thicker (0.25mm) copper/silver/silver-plated-copper and cut and glue the traces by hand. The 7 years of my architecture degree have made me something of an expert with a scalpel.

[Burnout21]

Any progress? Really want one of these!

[asura]

None what so ever I'm afraid. At the moment, I'm working seven days a week and studying for a distance learning diploma in the evenings so I barely have time to do anything, but it's not dead. I'm using the tablet on a nearly daily basis and each time I do I think... what if...