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IR Pens / tip-push IR-pen
« on: June 30, 2008, 02:01:52 PM »
As promised a guide on how to build a tip-push IR-pen. The key component is an Edding Retract 11 Permanent Marker.
The beauty of the Edding Retract 11 Permanent Marker comes from being well over engineered. Amazing how much effort went into designing and producing this marker. However, for building a IR-pen it is great for it comes already with its own battery holder.
The complete materials list:
- 1x Edding Retract 11 Permanent Marker (for Dutch: found at Primera @ €2,70)
- 1x Metal ring 4 mm diameter
- 1x Screw with flat head (5mm 20mm)
- 1x IR-LED (5mm, 940 nm)
- 1x ball point spring
- A bit of tin foil
- 1 piece of wire (8-9 cm, thin; I used one of the four inner wires of a phone wire)
- Small bit of sticky tape (for insulation purpose on the IR-LED)
A soldering set is required, although soldering is limited to two joints (which I’m more than happy about for I’m not that good at it).
Most difficult thing I found, besides the soldering, was to remove a spring near the tip. This took me a couple of minutes.
Initially I was a bit worried about getting the tip-push good enough. However, in hindsight, due to the design I came up with, the error margin in building/constructing is pretty big. This was additionally proven when I built tip-push IR-pen number two and recorded mean while my actions and steps (see the YouTube video).
What you get, is an easy to fine-tune tip-push IR-pen with an internal battery holder. The IR-pen does have the look and feel of a white board marker.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85GS6OKCS3Y [/youtube]
Stefan
The beauty of the Edding Retract 11 Permanent Marker comes from being well over engineered. Amazing how much effort went into designing and producing this marker. However, for building a IR-pen it is great for it comes already with its own battery holder.
The complete materials list:
- 1x Edding Retract 11 Permanent Marker (for Dutch: found at Primera @ €2,70)
- 1x Metal ring 4 mm diameter
- 1x Screw with flat head (5mm 20mm)
- 1x IR-LED (5mm, 940 nm)
- 1x ball point spring
- A bit of tin foil
- 1 piece of wire (8-9 cm, thin; I used one of the four inner wires of a phone wire)
- Small bit of sticky tape (for insulation purpose on the IR-LED)
A soldering set is required, although soldering is limited to two joints (which I’m more than happy about for I’m not that good at it).
Most difficult thing I found, besides the soldering, was to remove a spring near the tip. This took me a couple of minutes.
Initially I was a bit worried about getting the tip-push good enough. However, in hindsight, due to the design I came up with, the error margin in building/constructing is pretty big. This was additionally proven when I built tip-push IR-pen number two and recorded mean while my actions and steps (see the YouTube video).
What you get, is an easy to fine-tune tip-push IR-pen with an internal battery holder. The IR-pen does have the look and feel of a white board marker.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85GS6OKCS3Y [/youtube]
Stefan