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A Practical LCD Writing Tablet
An anonymous reader passes along a word about an innovative LCD writing tablet. The Boogie Board costs $30, can be written on with a stylus or a fingernail, and uses no power in the act of writing. Only erasing consumes power — from a watch battery, which lasts for 50,000 erases. The total cost per "page" comes out to only 1/15th that of steno paper. The writing surface is pressure-sensitive and "highly responsive to variable amounts of pressure," so you can make thick and thin lines.
Damn, My class mate and I had this kinda of an idea for a final year project, time to rethink.
I'd like to see a youtube of a boogie board in use.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Looks great, and the price seems awesome. Is it too good to be true?
Loban Amaan Rahman ==> Anagram of ==> Aha! An Abnormal Man!
There's no way to save whatever you've drawn onto the tablet, so it's the LCD equivalent of carrying around a small blackboard and an infinite supply of chalk. Or a whiteboard with an infinite supply of ink (of only one colour). At only $30, it's reasonably priced enough that it can cater to the niche of "I want to jot down a small note that I can hardcopy later for posterity, but I don't ever want to need to worry about my pen running out of ink, as long as I remember to change the battery occasionally".
There is no saving....
Wow, they want almost $45US for shipping an 11oz tablet to the UK.
USPS airmail from the US to the UK for a 1lb parcel is slightly over $10.
So, it's $30 for the tablet, and $35 for the handling fee. Shame.
I was really excited about this when I saw it earlier this week. In fact I thought it was so cool I attempted to buy one. The company appears to be selling them on Amazon, but won't ship them to the USA.... so, has anyone actually purchased one?
The thing would be awesome if I could save the screen. As it is I don't really see why I would choose it over paper since I can't save paper either, but at least paper I could store for later and write on more paper.
But it IS pretty cool.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"writing tablet" implies storage/transfer of said writing. This would pass more as a "glorified fridge notepad". booooring...
Cuz c'mon, what can you use this for? This is an easier to use version of the Etch-a-Sketch, nothing more. Good for kids to play with, but that's about it. I guess it beats paper and crayons, though, in that you now have an excuse not to have to put up their latest 'masterpiece' on the fridge for years. It's easier to just not have kids, though. Much more PRACTICAL that way.
from http://www.myboogieboard.com/
Attention
Due to overwhelming interest, the Boogie Board LCD Writing Tablet is currently out of stock on Amazon.com for orders shipping to the U.S. only (Amazon will still process an order for International shipment*).
Today's shipment to Amazon has sold out. The tablet is expected to be back in stock by Tuesday. If you would like to be notified when it is in stock, please follow us on Twitter or Facebook.
We apologize for any inconvenience.
Thank you for your interest in the Boogie Board LCD Writing Tablet and your effort to "Say Goodbye to Paper".
* Amazon will reject orders for U.S. shipment using the international link. Using the Buy Now button on myboogieboard.com will automatically take you to the international page.
And I don't think the page has been slashdotted yet.
Etch A Sketch
OK, so it's 1/15 the price of steno paper. But with no ability to interact with a computer, I can think of something even cheaper and just as useful for grocery lists, doodling, practicing ABCs, and playing tic-tac-toe: a $3 whiteboard.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
No battery at all, and the cost was just pennies. Back then, anyway. :-)
--Greg
Yet another Slashdot advertisement.
And it doesn't fit my definition of "practical".
It looks to me that this is not an electronic device, per se. There's no ability to save because it does not detect the presence of a writing object or the state of the surface. It seems to be just a really crappy, but durable, LCD screen. When you apply pressure, you displace the liquid crystal material. And when you "erase" the board, it applies electricity to redistribute everything. In order to add saving features, the "energy-efficient" part of the device that seems to be one of the major selling points would pretty much have to go down the drain.
This is not meant to be a permanent record, and I don't know why they relate it to a pad of paper... it's more like a monochrome dry erase board.
(I am not affiliated with the makers; I have never seen one of these up close and personal; The above writing is based purely on assumption from looking at pictures and reading what it does)
Seriously, why would anyone pay more than a dollar for something like this when Magic Slates have been around for decades with the exact same functionality?
You can. It's called a camera. Same as taking a picture of a whiteboard or blackboard.
Or a piece of paper!
It still gives me NO reason to use this device over something that needs no battery, and serves as archival hard copy of my idea.
Without the extra step of the camera, an electronic notepad would be very useful indeed to quickly produce pages of material that then got sent elsewhere. But needing that extra step just kills it from being more useful than paper.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've been searching for the ideal "electronic graph paper" and I have yet to find anything.
That's all I want too! I don't need it to play music or videos or browse the web, or even receive anything for that matter. Just let me use it as an off-line digitizing pad and I'll be happy.
The diagram neatening would be interesting but I could skip anything except recording where I pressed, preferably with some degree of pressure sensitivity as this offers.
That said this looks like this product probably can't even address pixels.
I wondered about that too, but there's got to be something that happens when you press that causes the state change, if it would even store that raw input and have software to assemble it back into an image later that would be fine by me.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I plan on getting on and trying it out. For $30, whenever it gets back in stock, it should be well worth it. I could see myself using if for to do lists or anything else I would normally use a scrap of paper for. Probably less likely to lose this too. Heck it might even look good hanging above my bar for a list of whats on tap.
When I was a child, I had this "toy" that was essentially a sheet of cardboard covered with some type of black film. On top of the black cardboard was a white, semi-transparent sheet of plastic. The cardboard and plastic were attached at the top of the toy (much like a legal pad). When you applied pressure with a stylus, the plastic sheet would press down on the cardboard sheet, creating a darker spot than the rest of the plastic surface. This would allow you to write/draw whatever you wanted. To erase, you simply lifted the plastic sheet off of the cardboard sheet.
That toy didn't use batteries and I can't imagine it would cost more than $5 today.
The thing doesn't sound very useful if the only way to erase is to wipe the entire screen. I'd like to use something like this to replace pencil-and-eraser for math, but not if it's like using a pen...
Isn't this one of those things you give to kids to write on and then to erase it you pull up on the piece of plastic on the front?
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Seems to me it needs to be bigger than a piece of paper. How about building one the size of a piece of plywood?
12 for 29cents that don't need a battery or $30 for this thing that does.... Doesn't seem pratical to me.
Shortly before reading this article, I was playing with my son's Magna Doodle, making a sketch of our dog. Somehow I was still impressed when I read this article. Nonetheless, the Magna Doodle is still cool. It takes no batteries to erase and even works under water! And it has for 36 years.
Apple will have what you want, albeit at a huge cost increase (business deductible maybe?). But it will work to take orders, plus retain the info, and be transferable probably wirelessly to the restaurants main computer system, etc. Heck, it might transfer in real time as you are writing on it at the table back into the kitchen, or to the bartender to start mixing and pouring. Plus, you will be able to do other stuff with it--if all these rumors are true. So wait three days..or get both! See which is better for your purpose.
It's not a practical LCD writing tablet if you can't store.
What I see is if they could implement this with and e-ink device and saving you could have the best digital note taker ever.
first post
Here is a young slashdotter using a widely available version of this device to analyze planetary motion and black holes:
Video Link 1
Here is another one using it to visually depict string theory:
Video Link 2
Sounds like a high tech Etch A Sketch to me :)
In Google we trust.
I'm going to dissent from the typical opinion here and say that I'd love this, even in its current form. In my duties as a programmer and sysadmin, I'm constantly jotting down things on sticky notes that I need to remember for one, two, maybe 5 days and then never again. A user's password so I can set up an account, a table schema so I can refer to it easily, a network diagram until I get it put into Visio, an IP, a telephone number, an IMEI, any number of things. I am always and forever using a sticky note and then trashing it. This would simply allow me to replace them with something functionally the same but without waste.
Yes, I agree -- it would be awesome to have the ability to save and have multiple pages. But let's not overlook what good it has already, which I'd say is quite a lot.
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I owned the WACOM bamboo medium tablet and really hated it. Spend the money and buy a cheap tablet pc. You write on the screen and see what you write. With a regular tablet you need to write and look at the screen. This is totally a skill i didnt have.
I bet you could get this thing to store images quite easily. (Well, with the right hardware design team and enough funding, I mean.)
But it seems that all you'd need is some manner of scanning a series of on/offs, technology which is very robust and all over the place. It would be basically a scaled up digital camera sensor; heck, you could probably use many of the same controller chips which have been developed over the last ten years.
The trick would be to hold back and not try to make it into an "everything" machine, (ie, a laptop). Sure, it would cost more than $30, but probably not much more. And if you rigged it so that power was only drained during a scan and write procedure, you could probably run it nicely on a couple of AA batteries for a good long while.
Now that would be a very interesting little device.
-FL
Am I the only one that's thought of adding some sort of acceleration based generator to this thing to replace the battery so that you could shake it to erase it? Then it truly would be a modern etch-a-sketch.
What's done's in the past, forever shall last.
Work is work; life is life; fair is not!
toy, we had things with the same functionality in 1970, they cost pennies too, just a cardboard frame with two layers of plastic sheet mounted in it, you used a wooden "stylus" (bit of bamboo) to draw on it, where there was pressure the plastic sheets stuck together and left a black mark, when you finished doodling you pulled one end and the edge of the inner cardboard frame slid up and separated the sheets, leaving the drawing area blank and ready for use again, didn't need no batteries either, also, etch a sketch, magnadoodle, same sort of thing functionally, call me when they make a cheap graphics tablet with a screen embedded so I can see what I am drawing as I draw it, under my stylus tip, there are such things, but they are silly soft expensive.
i have a pencil.
it doesn't take batteries, doesn't ... um ... dry out,
and lasts for a long time.
I got a magna-doodle for my wife when she was recovering from some voice problems, and it worked pretty well. It didn't do very well with small writing. Since the boogie board uses a stylus, it might be better in that regard.
Just had a quick look on Amazon UK, and they have it in stock.
£50.79 for the USB version. (Cordless G-PEN 450 4x5.5)
Which is quite a bit more than the $39 mentioned in the comments. But hey, this is the UK and we have been paying well over the odds for computer stuff for years.
Got mod points, so posting anonymously.
I could see a larger version of this being useful in the same manner as a chalk or white-board, and without the problem of markers that dry out or messy chalk dust. It could actually be quite handy to throw on a cubicle wall or office door for jotting quick notes and messages and even larger versions would be handy for presentations and group discussions.
The only problem I see is that there doesn't appear to be a way to selectively erase an area. (At least they're not showing that.) Clearing the whole thing in one fell swoop is useful, but not always desired.
Also the device would be better if the battery was easily replacable, iPods and similar are already annoying enough that way.
I thought it was a neat toy for kids, sort of like a very fancy etch a sketch. I went to their
web page and frankly was stunned it was made in the US. It looked like it would have to be made
in china. I was pleasantly surprised.
remember dragon naturally speaking? remember the apple newton? bill gates was hyping tablets in 2001
tablets are just not going to happen, like speech recognition is not going to happen
both are eternally just beyond the horizon and somehow superior... except they are not
sound recognition seems like it superior to keyboards, and yet its not
likewise, scribbling on a pad seems superior to keyboards, and yet its not
here, don't take my word for it, take bill gates circa 2001 hyping how we're going to be using tablets by now:
http://gizmodo.com/5324866/vintage-bill-gates-predicts-tablets-to-be-the-most-popular-form-of-pc-sold-in-america
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I already have a perfectly good place for temp data... my Clie. I'm sure that whatever handheld you use, whether it's a phone or a PDA, has a similar function built in. Now it's not as handy as it once was, in that I can no longer depend on being able to beam notes to co-workers back when everyone was using PalmOS or Windows CE (both of which supported Palm's IR beaming), but it's still an order of magnitude more convenient than a sticky note or a big clunky tablet.
Winos of the world, rejoice! I suppose there are plenty of arthritic old folk who might benefit from owning such a device.
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
Update: After talking to an Improv Electronics representative, we’ve confirmed that they are indeed working on a recordable Boogie Board tablet that would utilize flash memory and a USB connection to save and download your work. It would be the size and model, just with added storage and USB connection. They anticipate having this new version available for sale within the year but will still sell the current base version. Price on this new recordable model would be around $50. Read more: http://besttabletreview.com/the-boogie-board-paperless-lcd-writing-tablet-very-cool-and-only-30/#ixzz0dYELgHng
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
I expect more from slash-dot readers (yeah, I am fairly new around here).
Lots of comments about paper being better; comments that ignore that this device means not throwing paper away.
Lots of silly comments about this being an Etch-a-Sketch or Magic Slate or Magna Doodle - do the people making these comments bother to look at the article?
This has serious potential - an LCD panel that holds an image without power. OK, it doesn't have the ability to transfer images to PC yet, but there are several ways that can be achieved, and I'm sure it will be. This could be used in places where electronics are forbidden / dangerous. Write down notes while there, then switch it on to transfer the data when back at base, or whatever.
Have a little imagination, or sign up to the Flat Earth Society :)
Whatever I pay for a Mac, it more than pays for itself on the job. Every job I get these days comes with a flimsy Dell laptop running Win XP_64. I thank the tech who gives it to me and then I lock the laptop in a drawer and use my personal Mac.
I work in a 24x7x365 shop but MIS is only available during business hours. Sure, they might be able to fix my shitty Dell laptop on Monday but Monday is 48 hours away.
I need a reliable machine, and Windows just isn't reliable enough for me. Now that Mac OS has support for Exchange, there is no need of Windows. As for the the tablet issue, I'd like to keep the number of devices I carry to a minimum. If I can draw diagrams on the Apple tablet AND respond to email AND ssh into remote systems then I'll go with the Apple tablet. And most new devices such as Boogie Board only come with Windows drivers initially.
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
Here's a link to a project like this device from 2005. The project was never built (and no, I'm not claiming these guys stole it), just showing people have been thinking about this a while. Differences: the referenced project was credit-card sized, to be a pocketable notepad; and the project used old-school 'memory bank' technology to be able to have multiple pages.
If you cannot save what you drew, it's worthless. Paper is inexpensive and you get colors too - provided you have colored pens.