advice about connecting a serial Graphics Pad to a small LCD screen

[en2oh]

Hi guys,

I don't believe this question has been asked or answered but I'm interested in connecting a cheap wired Graphics Pad (ie wacom bamboo etc) to an LCD display. Since I'm not looking to use a real computer, I imagine there would need to be some PIC interface to handle the information coming from the graphics tablet. An Arduino with a small LCD screen would be perfect.

Any thoughts on where to go with this? If the wheel has already been invented, I'm all for taking something an reapplying it. Ultimately, I'd like to make this wireless ie with a serial data link but the first part is the tricky one I think.

Thanks for any advice/links/code

Doug

 

[en2oh]

Ok, slight variation on a theme. How about connecting a USB graphics pad wirelessly to a small LCD screen/ARM9 Embedded Linux SBC?

There used to be wireless USB cable solutions, but they all seem to have basically dried up.
Is there something intrinsically difficult about making a wireless USB connection ie a wireless "USB cable"?
Doug

 

[Sceadwian]

The USB spec itself and the way it transfers data does not lend itself well to wireless applications the protocol simply was not designed with wireless in mind, you're better off sticking with wired, which brings it down to finding out the USB protocols that the tablet uses (likely HID which should be relatively painless to implement)

 

[en2oh]

Unfortunately, wired isn't an option.
I have to find a wireless option.
Doug

 

[Sceadwian]

A Zigbee or wifi module might work, but you're stuck building hardware and software to interpret the USB on both ends and code a custom protocol to try to get the best responce.

 

[House0Fwax]

These 'graphic pad' things that you speak of are also available in the 'Serial' flavour. I have one. I have no idea how it works ( I can't even take the thing apart ). Serial is easy* to transmit wirelessly.

*certainly more so than USB.

 

[en2oh]

Yes, I've found the serial version.
The software that is available includes Windows AND Linux. I don't believe that there is an Android driver but who knows.
Even if serial is "easier" (or perhaps possible), there still are challenges in terms of code to display the serial stream that is coming from the pad.
Any thoughts on "easiest" way of accomplishing this?
Thanks for your thoughts guys,
Doug
(BTW, I"ve got some PIC 16F628 source code that does work with a fairly obscure 128x64 serial LCD module with some memory on board, if that would be useful)

 

[Sceadwian]

en20h... Android is Linux.... All you'd have to do is re-compile the code, possibly port some of it.