Anoto Bluetooth Digital Pen on Android OS

By Radu Motisan Posted on May 26th, 2012 , 2379 Views (Rate 6.13)

Anoto Group AB is a Swedish technology company which has invented, developed and licensed a product line of digital pens and a product suite to manage information capturing utilizing these (marketed as Anoto) (Source)

I recently developed a software that allows connecting such a PEN to an Android tablet using HID:

The software uses the HID protocol over bluetooth and implements the custom communication protocol required for getting the coordinates and the pressure data from the digital pen.

This way pages of text can be store in the internal memory of the PEN, or transferred wirelessly to a mobile computer for storing or further processing. There are multiple possibilities here: direct paper to technology path (for drawing a diagram and then interacting with it on the mobile phone/tablet) , on site calculations (including length, perimeter, etc), but also interactive sessions, such as group projects or even classroom lessons, as show in this video:

I cannot disclose the exact details used for communication, but I can say that the HID protocol used by Anoto comes with additional commands used to access and control the data processed by these pens. A very well organized structure, that allows downloading stored data or handling real time data, stats on memory or battery, and handwriting details such as pen pressure or coordinates .

Suzanne Harmon:
August 24th, 2012 at 7:26 am

Cool, My BF have a plan to buy android tablet in next couple days. My questions : 1. Is this samsung galaxy phone still shipped from Korea? 2. Does it have USB port? 3. Is this android tablet worth to be owned? 4. Which is the best for browse the internet, new iPad or samsung galaxy tablet? Thank you, Suzie

chahat bhatia:
March 11th, 2013 at 12:25 pm

Hi Radu,

Great work!! I wanted to do something similar with Anoto and Android. Is it possible for you to share your work? It would save a lot of redo work for me. Or else any pointers from where to start is also highly appreciable.

thanks
Chahat

Radu Motisan:
March 11th, 2013 at 1:11 pm

@chahat what exactly are you interested in?

chahat bhatia:
March 12th, 2013 at 3:45 pm

I am new to Anoto technology, Basically i was interested in a text editing mobile app using Anoto, I have the sdk for windows and i think there are some apps that can help you edit text/annotate pdf on desktop but I would like to replicate that on Android. I thought if you could share your sdk implementation i would be saved from doing the underlying layer to communicate to and from the pen to mobile, and concentrate directly on the app instead.

Radu Motisan:
March 12th, 2013 at 4:25 pm

@chahat: I’ll drop you an email later today.

Don:
March 21st, 2013 at 2:20 am

I realize this post is a bit stale now, but I would like to discuss reviving it for a different platform. Can you email me please? Thanks, Don.

Alexander:
April 1st, 2013 at 9:04 pm

Where ca I buy this app.

Radu Motisan:
April 1st, 2013 at 9:05 pm

This project is not released as an app on the market. What exactly do you need?

Alexander:
April 2nd, 2013 at 7:02 pm

Hello Mr.Motisan
I am searching an app to make my notes on my galaxy tab 10.1 with bluetooth anoto pen. I use the Maxell DP-201 and a livescribe pulse without BT. Both system are good, but did not work together with android.
I am Fan of moleskine notebooks, but there is no android notebook with look and fell like a real tabbed black notebook.

Alexander Pohl

tachikoma:
April 8th, 2013 at 4:53 pm

Dear Radu

Thank you for sharing this video. Great work! I have a question regarding the pen that you are using. Could you please drop me an email? Thanks

Filippo Casamassima:
April 22nd, 2013 at 8:01 pm

Dear Radu,
I’m a PhD.student from University of Bolonga. Our research group is interested in developing applications using Anoto pens.
We’re interested in realtime handwriting analysis, this analysis can be performed either on PC or Tablet. Could you please tell us which pen did you use? and how did you configure it to be used as HID?
thanks for any info.
Filippo

Pedro de Brito:
May 6th, 2013 at 3:05 pm

Hey Radu, great work, I would like to know if it’s possible to give me an insight in how you made the connection via bluetooth.
Started developing an android app for Anoto and can´t seem to make the connection between pen and an android phone.

Thank you in advance!