Anoto Digital Pen Technology: How does this technology work?
What the heck is a digital smartpen and how is it different from other pens on the market?
The well-known Anoto digital pen technology is the pioneering high-tech pen technology responsible for the transfer of handwritten text from paper to digital media in many of the digital pens on the market today. An essential difference in Anoto digital pen technology is its sophisticated real-time image processing that can calculate and recreate 100 images per second.
What is the difference between a digital pen and a normal pen?
The essential difference lies in the casing of the pen itself. The basic ingredients of a digital pen are the sophisticated miniature camera that captures images of the handwriting, an image processing unit that takes the images and converts them to digital format along with a communication interface. The pen houses a small ink cartridge that is used to write on the special paper.
This special paper is divided into small rectangular parts as seen on a graph sheet. Images taken with the digital camera are captured with the patterned paper in the background. A special algorithm converts these images into digital format which is then stored in memory.
What is the difference between a digital smartpen like Livescribe smartpens and other recording pens?
That’s how the new Livescribe digital smartpens work. Using special Livescribe dotted paper, the pen recorder captures everything you write and draw. At the same time, the smartpen records synchronized audio sounds while you take notes or draw. Recorded audio can be played back by tapping the dotted paper on a special word (keyword) with the pen or searching by word or phrase. Playing synchronizes the playback of your original notes with time, so you can see exactly what you wrote down at a given point during the original lesson. Recorded audiovisual clips are called pencasts. They can be stored on the pen and transferred to your PC or Mac for storage, updating, searching, retrieving, reviewing, and exporting to friends. The pencast works like any computer file.
A digital smartpen, then, is a pen that electronically stores what you write on paper while capturing the audio and synchronizing the integration of the audio text. Later, you can upload the audio clip, the pencast, to your personal Livescribe Community web space, where you can create personalized notebooks, organize notes, update, and play just like any other computer file. Livescribe Desktop software gives you the ability to share your audio files and eNotebooks with the public Livescribe community and export your notes and audio to PDF formats and over the Internet to other computers and mobile phones.
The audio integration of Livescribe digital smartpens is a significant enhancement to digital pen technology.