Lenovo has recently released their Force Pad which doubles as both a touchpad and a drawing surface that is powered by Wacom. @catastrophic Would this be an interesting module idea for the Framework 16?
I would love to see such a product with the out-of-the-box Linux support.
definitely, you should do it! ![]()
There is already a 3d printable full width input module. You could probably adjust it to fit, say a old mobile phone type screen in place of the existing touchpad.
You could then touch it, or draw on it, and it could also act as a slow second display.
You might then need to make a mini pcb with a processor on it, to adapt it to work over the existing I2C interface.
Canβt you already draw on the existing touchpad if you wanted to? Maybe disable the clicking movement it can do, so drawing on it would work better?
I have just tested the existing touchpad, trying to draw in βgimpβ on Linux.
The existing touchpad is for relative position input, and one needs absolute position input for pen use. So, the existing one does not work. Maybe changing the touchpad software could make it switchable between relative and absolute positioning?
Looking at the touchpad, it appears to send absolute position, and the Linux kernel/desktop is converting them to relative. So, one probably only needs some software changes to make the FW touchpad work with pen input.