Digital pen

A digital pen is used in conjunction with digital paper to detect hand-written notes to store and transfer them to a computer. To an ink cartridge, an infrared camera, a processor, a data memory and a battery are incorporated in the pen. The infrared camera detects during the writing movement of the pen on the point pattern of the digital document. This vector data is stored in the pen and transferred to a computer using Bluetooth or a USB interface.

Newer versions, such as the Pulse Smartpen Livescribe, also allow the recording of audio files while writing. They are associated with the notes, which allows the user to retrieve the recorded audio file at the moment when selecting the written notes.

Companies use digital pins on the simplification and digitization previously paper-based business processes, such as Contracts, surrender or acceptance reports or evidence for traffic safety. Documents are prepared so that from the pin recorded data with a template can be merged indelible and auditable. Professional digital capture pins next to the typeface also contact pressure and tilt angle of the pen during the writing process and thus enable graphologic opinion.

The combination of digital pen, digital paper and a server, which brings together data with templates that enables the archiving of documents in real time, without requiring them to actually be scanned. If the system is associated with a handwriting recognition input can first be checked for completeness and integrity, to be subsequently transferred to backend systems.

Digital pens are manufactured by different vendors such as Pulse, Nokia, Logitech, Anoto and Maxell.

The game manufacturer Ravensburger sold under the name " tiptoi " a digital pen as an educational game that is sold in conjunction with picture books from digital paper.