OK, So justblair.co.uk is an electronics and audio site primarily, but i though I would share with you a half hour hack that converts a Cross Ion Pen into a touch screen stylus for resistive touch screens.
For those who have not seen this pen before, the Cross Ion Pen is a bullet shaped pen approximately 3/4 the size of a standard pen when closed. It opens by pulling the two halves of the pen apart which both unsheathes the pin nib and elongates the pen to full size. It’s pretty ingenious though the drawback is that the pen uses non-standard refills which are both expensive and difficult to buy off the shelf. Some people have resorted to converting other ink refills for use in their Cross Ion.
I bought mine a few years ago and after the pretty miserly ink refill ran out, it was vanquished to the bottom of a toolbox for years. Recently though I repurposed it for use as a stylus for my Asus T101MT Tablet PC. The conversion it turns out is a pretty easy job. I am sure that this little hack could be applied to other pens with similar refill cartridges.
This is an interesting little modification that i have completed on my EeePC901. Based on an Atmel aTiny45 processor it's function is relatively simple, but as it is built from scratch, the build took some interesting twists and turns. Not only that, but it also has a nice little social story that for me was part of what made it such an engaging little project.
