The Cregle iPen is a new Kickstarter-funded stylus for the iPad – one that has some unique and powerful features about it. It has already far exceeded its Kickstarter funding target and should be available as a retail product early next year.
Here’s a little about how it works and why it’s unique:
The Cregle iPen transforms the iPad into a content creation device, not just a content consumption device. iPen is the first active digitizer stylus that allows you to write with precision directly on the iPad. Unlike the passive digitizer used in the typical iPad stylus, iPen writes like a real pen with accurate positioning and palm rejection features that passive products simply cannot achieve.
With the Cregle iPen’s active digitizer, the attached receiver picks up the iPen’s signal and its precise position as it hovers above the screen (whereas a passive stylus can be located only when the user touches the screen). This crucial advantage allows iPen to actively transmit 60 samples per second to pinpoint the pen’s exact location.
The video demo above is very impressive – showing how the iPen can make really tiny strokes within cells on a graph paper style note screen.
Another impressive thing about this project is it already has support from a number of iPad apps, which will allow for the use of the iPen in their apps – and Cregle are actively looking for more partnerships with app developers.
This looks like it will be a very good option for iPad users who are looking to use handwriting recognition a lot, or who need a precise stylus for any reason.
Check out the Kickstarter page for the iPen for lots more details and demo videos:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1225098940/ipen-the-first-active-stylus-for-ipad
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This is very cool. I can see a huge use for this with artists as well. Would definitely try if the cost is not prohibitive.
Went to link to Kickstarter for iPen on my iPad. Product is FOR the iPad and yet they lead with a video that requires Adobe Flash. Underwhelmed.
I am a user of this pen and its not as good as you see in this video. Even though this is way better than any of the capacitive/fat tip styluses out there, there are quite a lot of problems. Like, there is a delay between your stroke and for the same to actually appear on the screen. So, if you are using it for writing and if you write fast, then what you end up with is definitely won’t look like your real handwritting. Plus, there is a bunch of calibration issues, for example, if you hold the pen a certain way during calibration, you will have to recalibrate again the next time so that the strokes appear exactly where you want them to appear. So, its like you end up calibrating every time you use the pen, simply because we humans don’t really hold the pen at exactly the same way all the time. Those subtle variations really show in this pen.
However, the GOOD news is that Cregle has admitted to the mistakes they made with this pen and are now coming up with iPen 2 with all the problems of this iPen solved. You can preorder it by making a pledge at the kickstarter site. Lets hope its better than this.
Good read. It seems like a precise stylus pen that can be more useful. Thanks for sharing.