Part 1 - 8th June, the sickness strikes.

For ages I’ve been visiting the Wacom site gazing at the very lovely Cintiq range.

This is hybrid screen/graphics tablet which makes me drool.  The price however makes me weep, £2000ish  for the 20” version.  They also do a thing called the PL at 17” for a more reasonable £500ish. Occasionally they appear on the site in their bargain basement ex-demo section. Still hard for me to justify though.

Then I had one of those “spang” moments. None of the tech involved is new and all is readily available second hand, it’s just a matter of putting it together.   My Wacom at work will happily operate with the stylus off the surface, after that it’s just an LCD screen, right? Anyhow where’s the fun in just buying something?

Experiment – what depth does a tablet work to? Stack of paper says 9mm before accuracy starts to suffer noticeably. An LCD with an EL film backlight has to be thinner than that.

So here’s the challenge, What is the least amount of money I can build a Cintiq style device for?

NOW HEAR THIS.

So there are thousands of people reading this page.  You folks need to know this , seriously.  This is NOT a tutorial, this is just my experiences. There are still some issues with the design which will affect the order of doing things a bit.   I've fitted a fan and logged it in the "revisions" section, also please read the disclaimer on the front page (got to cover myself apparently). click on the fish to get there.

FORUM

I have started a forum so that anyone who wants to have a go can have source of experience and support, see build logs, monitor strips, that sort of thing. It would be great to see you there and joining in.   If you've got any questions then please do come and ask them there.

The Wacom Cintiq.
A thing of beauty,
Excuse me, I’ve got to go and
lie down for a minute.
(This image copyright Wacom.)

The Depth Test
The Whole 9mm