Can’t Afford a Drawing Tablet? Never Mind! DIY
Like many other stories written these days, this one also starts with the “Pandemic”. Yes, people in Sri Lanka also struggling with the direct and indirect effects of this pandemic. Among the others, universities in Sri Lanka are not functioning as usual due to the same reason. Academics are encouraged to use distance learning techniques including online lectures. In Sri Lanka, distance learning was not a common practice, especially in undergraduate degree programs. However, as a lecturer in one of the state-owned universities in Sri Lanka, I too started conducting lectures online.
Something is missing
One thing I missed so badly while I am conducting the online lectures is the “whiteboard”. I could not believe that I totally relied on the whiteboard when explaining some complex concepts. I found that it is almost impossible to answer the questions of some students without a whiteboard. Zoom and MS Team are the software I use for conducting my lectures. MS Whiteboard app is there with MS teams. But, it is useless without a drawing pad or a drawing tablet.
Drawing Pad/Tabled
People who have used drawing pads know the real struggle of using it. The steep learning curve is unavoidable. However, that was the least problem for me. The biggest one is that it is out of stock everywhere in the country. The second option was the super expensive drawing tablet. The story was no different. Finally, I decided to create a drawing pad/tablet myself. The following were tried and ended up in half baked prototypes.
- Draw on a paper and use a webcam to capture it.
- Draw on a paper, use a webcam to capture, process and digitize
- Android touchpad app
None was a practical solution. So I decided to create an android app that can work as a drawing tablet for a PC.
Small screen! will it work?
That was the first question that got into my mind and eventually, I solved it. Using a finger to draw something on a smartphone touch screen is not as precise as drawing something with a specially designed stylus on a drawing tablet. I solved it by introducing scaleup functionality. Higher the scale, more the precision that can be achieved. Yes, it works!
How practical is it?
Now I use the app in all my online lectures. I use it especially for annotating the PowerPoint slides in real-time. Furthermore, I use it as a remote controller for PowerPoint slide show. It is not a perfect alternative for a whiteboard. However, now I can live with it.
It’s available for everybody — for FREE
I thought of sharing the app, so others who are struggling with the same problem can benefit from it. I put it in the google play store as a free app and anybody can download it. The server app also available publicly so, anybody can download it.
Features?
- Easy connection with PC through a wireless network
- Mirror the PC screen to the Android device (on demand)
- Control Powerpoint slideshow remotely
- Ultra-precise on-screen annotation (writing and drawing) with finger/stylus
- Two-finger gestures for scaling and panning
- Can be used with any painting app including MS Paint
- Fast and reliable drawing
- A very simple server application
- Optimized for fast communication
Demonstration
I created a small video to demonstrate the capabilities of the app. You can watch it from the following link. Note that the video was made with an initial version of the app. The current version is much better than what you can see in this video.
Download the app
Use the following links to download the android app and server app (only for windows).
Download Android app: https://bit.ly/3eadILq
Download server app: https://bit.ly/pptpadserver12
Let me know your suggestions on this app. I hope that you get the maximum of it.