Hand-drawn scribble to forum - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 05:25:22 pm
content: Often I crave for a way to upload a pencil and paper scribbling.Alternatively I must write a full paragraph and still not describe clear enough what a 10 seconds hand-drawing would show. And to upload a sketch, I must take a photo of the pencil and paper scribbling:- move away from the PC to grab the camera- fiddle with light and focus and framing for the camera- plug the USB to upload the pic- open the pic in an editor, to crop the clutter- change the resolution to something decent- save in optimized colors and compression, so the attachment to be less than 100 kBytes or so- then browse to where the crop is saved and attach it to the forum...This is tedious.Any ideas? What to use instead, or how to add a hand-drawn schematic/waveform/formula/etc. in a snappy way?

author: Solberg
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 05:33:23 pm
content: At my old university, they sold a pen that would copy everything you wrote into internal memory.So you could upload to your computer. And you would get an exact copy.Is it something like that, you are thinking about?

author: Solberg
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 05:36:04 pm
content: Like this one.https://eu.livescribe.com/

author: ledtester
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 05:45:18 pm
content: I still take a picture, but I use my cell phone which automatically uploads the pic to cloud storage. In my case that's Google Drive.I have to wait a little while for it to become available on my laptop, but when it is I just take a screenshot which lowers the resolution and reduces the size of the image.

author: Gregg
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 07:04:06 pm
content: I use a flatbed scanner for sketches etc. I have a Canon flatbed that scans directly to pdf files; even most managers can open a pdf file!

author: jpanhalt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 07:14:22 pm
content: Image handling here is tedious at best. Even a scribble using a EDA is hard to post.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 07:33:14 pm
content: Quote from: Solberg on June 21, 2021, 05:36:04 pmThat's a very eye-catching gadget!Some youtube reviews are from 2009, so why are those pens not ubiquitous already? They must have some big inconvenient that renders them not that appealing than in the demo. Expensive proprietary paper and ink is certainly an inconvenient, but I suspect there might be more to it than that. Never seen anybody using one in practice, not even in multinational corporations.Seems there are more players to the concept of smart pen, some random top 9 smart pen review video:https://youtu.be/YJ83SFl553kI even have an ancient pen-scanner, but not working. Completely forgot I have that, yet I evaluated the idea of making DIY hand-scanner from a mouse sensor taped to a pencil.Found it, apparently not broken, C-Pen 200, from around the year 2000, blinking it's waiting for an OS upgrade!

author: ChristofferB
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 08:37:01 pm
content: There is a notebook with accompanying app, that lets you digitize and clean the pages you draw with your smartphone. Forgot the name.Else, I usually make the thread/post I want to make on my desktop pc, then edit and add a picture of the drawing from my phone.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 09:06:04 pm
content: On a Mac you can right click on the desktop and take a photo with an associated iPhone that is immediately saved to the desktop. It took me a total of 1m 15s, including getting the pad and pen out, taking the photo, rotating it and colour correcting it in Preview. I've taken longer typing this than the whole shebang took

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 22, 2021, 02:41:52 am
content: With a modern laptop that has a built-in camera, taking photos and posting online is rather easy.Otherwise, having a computer with Bluetooth and a smartphone do not require many steps either. Once the two are paired ONCE, the transfers are quite easy to do.For the occasional resizing and cropping I either use Irfanview or, if there is a need to add elements, I use Screenpresso.

author: SmallCog
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 22, 2021, 03:02:32 am
content: MS Paint!It's not really a forum without an MS Paint diagram being posted occasionally!!I'm only at my PC right now because it looks like I'm working if I sit here staring at the screen and meaningfully tapping keys.I mostly however surf the net on my iPad and an apple pencil would be just the thing for a quick doodle