Digital Pen Input Solutions
FinePoint's core technology enables a pen to be interpreted as it moves across a surface, reporting the tip status, sensitivity, pen position and other details. Thus, the pen provides the feel of natural handwriting and the navigational capability of a mouse. This is an active radio frequency (RF) system, rather than a passive stylus commonly used with PDAs. Active digitizers provide a rich user experience with greater accuracy, hover capability and pressure sensitivity. For more on the differences between active and passive digitizers, download a whitepaper here. Our basic system consists of a writing pen and digitizer:


Prior to the launch of our digital technology, an analog technology called frequency encoding was the dominant method available to enable communication between the pen and the active RF digitizer. With digital communication, we can eliminate many of the common limitations of analog computing pens.

Digital communications involves using a single carrier frequency, 500 KHz for example, which is encoded with data to communicate information. The encoded information is transmitted in groups called digital "packets". These packets can be used to communicate anything at any level of detail.

As with cell phones, which have evolved from the early analog technology to digital, digital communication has several inherent advantages over analog for the pen computing market.

  · Increased functionality: The capability of the digital technology to enhance the communications between the PC and the pen and vice versa is a powerful enticement for PC designer engineers and software applications and utility developers.
  · Improved accuracy: digital communication requires less bandwidth, thus improving the position signal fidelity
  · Lower cost: adding features does not require additional tuning or increase the cost of production
  · Larger feature set: unique pen identification, reconfigurable pens, simultaneous use of multiple pens, security features…

A white paper describing the differences between analog and digital communication for pen computing is available here.

We have expanded our core technology to offer OEMs a full matrix of user-defined choices. Visit our product page or contact us to learn more about how we can help enrich the electronic experience.