Patent ID: 7324020

Claim:
A method, comprising: moving an actuator, by applying a manipulation signal to an actuator, to make a physical contact with a general purpose input board; and generating an actuator identity signal for providing a predetermined command, wherein said actuator identity signal is indicative of at least one of: a location of said actuator on a surface of said general purpose input board and of a force imposed by said actuator on said general purpose input board, and wherein said general purpose input board contains on the surface of said general purpose input board N conducting lines parallel to each other and electrically isolated from each other, and contains beneath the surface of said general purpose input board K further conducting lines parallel to each other and electrically isolated from each other and from said N conducting lines, said K further conducting lines being perpendicular to said N conducting lines, and wherein each of said K further conducting lines has N−1 contacts extending to the surface of said general purpose input board having one such contact of said N−1 contacts between any two of said N parallel conducting lines, wherein N and K are integers of at least a value of two.