How Drawing Tablet EMR Pen technology works
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- Опубліковано 18 чер 2024
- Have you ever wondered how EMR (Electromagnetic Resonance) Pens work in drawing tablets like those made by Wacom? This video will walk you through the basics of how tablets and pens work together use EMR technology to provide battery-less pens that can sense position, tilt, and pressure.
UPDATE COMING! I will be creating an updated version of this video in 2023
ERATTA, REFERENCES, AND OTHER NOTES: docs.thesevenpens.com/drawtab...
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Table of Contents
00:00 Introduction
00:59 Start with an Incandescent lightbulb
01:25 Delivering power without a wire or battery
01:58 Inductors
03:10 The LC Circuit
05:53 Building an graphics tablet step-by-step
09:07 Detecting Pen Position
13:58 Detecting Pen Tilt
13:58 The LC Circuit is the simplest kind of EMR pen
18:38 Detecting Pen Pressure
21:03 Detecting Pen Buttons
22:32 Recap
23:25 End and Thank You
This is fantastic! I love the written text, illustrations, animations and easy to follow narration. I'm surprised it doesn't have any responses
Thank you so much!!!
Gosh, why this video is underrated
because it is useful.. very few people actually think.
was looking for this for so long, did kinda imagine how the screen would work but the concept of the pen is just amazing
Very interesting, especially when bought a tablet with this technology 😊
Sweet!
amazing
Very interesting, thanks for your great work!
I always thought the pens were closer to RFID, having the coil powering a chip which sends a reply back via the coil. This is definitely way simpler that I thought.
Thanks you! The design demonstrated in the video is a much older EMR design. Modern EMR pens do have a a chip which digitally encodes data like pressure into the return signal from the coil. I newer design is covered in this video about pressure: ua-cam.com/video/Otxm-JNa-i8/v-deo.html
@@thesevenpens thanks! Will have a look.
WOW! This video is pure gold! Here is from Brasil, and I´m not found one in portuguese. Congrats!
Amazing. Thank you
thank you fr the knowledge
Thanks man
This channel needs more love, this video clarifies everything
Thank you!
Great video.. Thanks for the explanation.
Fantastic video, great stuff, informative and entretaining end to end
Superb explanation ❤
which simulation software is he using in the video
I'm using this tool for the circuit simulations: www.falstad.com/circuit/
Wow. Have been waiting for for years for video like this, that describes wacom technology in details.
Maybe you could explain also how iPad digitizer works? It seems like something different.
Thank you! I'm still trying to find out how it works on the iPad. I can't find anything that gives a detailed explanation. If I do find something though, I will add a video describing it.
Thank you, great explanation for us lay people. To me this is magical.
Thanks! I'm glad this explanation was interesting for you!
Excellent vid 7Pens thank you very much, cheers Kev
Thanks for the comment! So happy to see that you liked it. :-)
Astounding work, thank you for taking the time into creating this informative video!
Glad you liked it!
Great video! thanks
Glad you liked it!
Tht's good and very usefull i've been serching for over a month so thx
Thank you!
Very well explained! Thanks
Thank you! I'm glad you liked the explanation - I spent so much time putting this together!
the right pic at 3:09 is technically 2 on the left and many on the right
Thank you, a great explanation of EMR pens. The only thing that is missing: how do the art pens detect barrel rotation?
I'm still trying to figure that out. I've been meaning to learn about it. I'll do a little research.
@@thesevenpens I've been really curious about that. I have one for my Intuos 3 tablets that looks like a marker on the end, and the latest one that works with my Cintiq 16. I guard that thing with my life because they are nearly impossible to come by now. It's much more natural to use than trying to deal with brush rotation using tilt. I've never been able to get the hang of that.
I would have liked to see barrel rotation addressed as well. Cool video though
If I can find out more about how barrel rotation is implemented, I will definitely make a video about it.
I noticed that the PCB only has bands of inductors instead of filling the space for each plane, is this because it can interpolate the coordinate using the analog values or are there more hidden in internal pcb layers? I was thinking of trying to make my own digitiser.
So far, everything I've seen - photos of the PCBs and documentation - indicates that the coordinates are interpolated. If you do try to make your own digitizer, I'd love to hear about it!
Can you also do the same for apple stylus technology?
There's very little information out there about Apple's tech., But as soon as I find something substantial I will absolutely make a video about it!
do the tablet coils give energy and detect at the same time, take turns, or completely separate circuits?
Based on what I researched, the tablet coils switch between sending energy and detecting many times a second.
Are the fields from the digitizer under the screen so strong that it can cause an initial charge on the pen to start the resonance.
I think that is how it works - the initial charge in the LC circuit starts the resonance.
@@thesevenpens i see isee
Does anyone know where I could purchase the part that goes into the pen?
Are you referring to the nib or do you mean the ferrite rod, or something else?
@@thesevenpens Not the nib, the tech inside the pen specifically. E,g the rod and the chip. I’ve searched but either I am using the wrong name or you can’t buy them.
hey, could you please link me to the scanline channel
You can find that link in the notes for this video: docs.thesevenpens.com/drawtab/technotes/emr-tab-tech
Is component of pen water resistnant?
Sorry for the late reply. No, it's not water resistant at all. Sometimes people do accidentally get water in their pen and after some time drying the pen will work, but sometimes it does really damage the pen.
Do tablets that support a stylus work on the same principle?
If so, why doesn't the stylus from a graphics tablet work on a tablet that supports a stylus?
Is it really just because of the drivers?
Maybe this will help answer your question: ua-cam.com/video/cKBSpIVeZJk/v-deo.html
If it doesn't, then let me know.
@@thesevenpens thx, i got it_)
So the brain listens for the pen 133 times a second in the case of a CTL 473?
In the case of the CTL-472, 133Hz is the number of "reports" the tablet gives the computer every second. Each report gives the pen position, pressure, tilt etc.
The brain of the tablet switches between listening to the pen and sending power to the pen at a different rate entirely. We aren't sure how many times a second that is happening, but we think it is many more times a second. Some people think it is 100x faster than that or even more. I'm still trying to find a specific reference from Wacom we can cite.
@@thesevenpens There is a filter in OpenTabletDriver which specifically mentions that it would be helpful for the CTL-473 because of the 133 rps. I have no idea how to works and I have no idea about Github either. The filter is called temporal resampler if it peaks your interests
very interesting! Thanks for bringing to my attention. I had not heard about that filter before. I will check it out.
"They're called inductors because they induce a current" doesn't really explain what that means.
Normies don't know what induce is meant with here.
I thought about explaining more here but thought that it would be too much for this video. And also, it was getting into territory I am not super familiar with.
Your explanation is very clear and it's a very informative video, but when i decided to measure the amount of current it sends, i got nothing ! 😑 i was thinking i could make a pen where the nib will last longer then usual
Interesting idea to make a pen! Maybe one of the scanlime videos below on this topic could be useful for you:
Graphics Tablet Primer for Hackers - scanlime:012
ua-cam.com/video/nPab7pbOhBY/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/j4AKwJERxOw/v-deo.html
Wacom Teardown and Schematic - scanlime:013
ua-cam.com/video/oKVCwPn6OPI/v-deo.html
Your Wacom pen is an Electric Pendulum
@@thesevenpens thanks for the video and these resources
so the pen does not have a battery? aka over time it wont degrade like the pen with a battery does?
Correct these EMR pens have no battery. It won't degrade at all. The only thing that really happens is people sometimes drop their pen and the drop might damage the internal components. But without physical damage that these pens just keep working forever. I've even used EMR pens from 25 years ago. One clarification I should make is that this is called "passive EMR". Some older non-wacom EMR pens are "active EMR". These pens do either have a rechargeable or replaceable battery.
@@thesevenpens thx for clarificatiom, so these new chinese pens that say they require no charging, they still have a battery?
@@asdfggqwe The chinese tablet brands switched to battery-less EMR for quite a while now. So definitely their latest pens NOT have batteries. The only reason they ever sold ones with batteries in the first place is because Wacom has patents. But those patents expired over a decade ago. Occasionally though one may still find some retailers have old inventory and are selling the much older tablets that have pens that use batteries.