Final project

Previous ideas

The initial idea of my final project is open to change as my skills develop and my sense of what's possible catches them up and the ideas start flowing, but here's what I've have in my mind right now. I have left visible the how the idea has changed over time.

Portable low-treshold notetaking tool

Making notetaking as easy as possible. I think taking notes is excellent way to reduce information overwhelm as well as enhance thinking and creativity. I'd like to make it as easy as possible .

Requirements:
- Small enough to be carried everywhere with ease
- A semi-automated connection to phone or computer (and cloud) for storage and organizing the notes
- There should be multiple documents to write on which can be toggled on the device
- I want it to be cheap to produce (there are a lot expensive devices for that purpose)
- Possibly an automated notes-to-text integration

Idea 1. Pocket-sized note-taking device

A small tablet type of device that can fit into pocket and has a pen that leaves an impermanent mark on the surface (or doesn't).

Claude gave a simulation of this as we were discussing with it tp make sense of the Rand Tablet (see below).

Idea 2. Universal pen

A pen that can write on (almost) any surface and it saves the notes based on where the pen tip has moved.

Here's a paper on FlashPen that does something similar with an high-accuracy optic sensor as in a gaming mouse.

Next level application for this could be an augmented reality application for phone camera (or similar): you can use camera to view the text on the surface it was written. This would require a spot in the surface, for example the pen itself, that sets the origin for the notes to appear.

How I got here: the chain of thought

The earliest idea from the first week: a portable sheet that has sensors on the sides so that it knows a location of pen that is "drawing" on the sheet. The pen has a sensor which senses the pressure. There is also a projector on top of the sheet, projecting on it what has been drawn. What is being drawn is also visible on the computer screen (on the right). I'm looking into a possibility to integrate it into a open source design software, such as GIMP, Inkscape or even FreeCad.

A sketch of this idea (while practicing InkScape):

After discussing with Kris about the early version of this idea, he suggested that I'd make my own "rand tablet", an early version of a tablet and a stylus from 1964. Here's link to original paper and youtube video that explain how it works: it sends a pulse in speficic times to each wire under surface. The pen senses pulses, sends them to computer through wire, and based on which time-coded pulses it receives, an accurate position of it is calculated and its input controls the software.

Followed by this chain of thought I made a cardboard prototype of it (or similar at least) in the laser cutting week. It has an integrated swipe for cleaning up the surface.