Hardware
The Boogie Board Tablet
We seemed to have missed any previous coverage of the Boogie Board, but it is now available for order from Amazon and other retailers. What is it? Well, at first glance it looks like a chalkboard. But it is a slate device that you can write on with the included stylus or your finger. Think of it as a chalk white board as you can’t save what you scribble. Once you’re done with what’s on the screen you hit a button and erase the screen. It retails for $35. It has a non-user replaceable battery but there is a free replacement program available. The manufacturer says you can clear the board 50,000 times in the life of the battery. They predict that’s at least a year’s worth of use.
From what I’m reading on this, it is as thin as a piece of gum (not a stick of gum, but the Trident style gum pieces), and weighs in at 4.2 ounces. Anybody tried this out?
notstarman
06/18/2010 at 5:27 am
I tried it out in an in store demo. It has good readability, response time, and palm rejection. However it feels like I am writing on wax coated cardboard sheet with a plastic overlay. The only difference is the button that clears the screen. Basically its a toy.
sbtablet
06/18/2010 at 6:26 am
It reminds me of those old drawing tablet toys my mom would let me get when we were traveling, the kind with the black plastic in back, a gray piece, and a clear plastic sheet on top. You wrote or drew with a plastic stylus, and then ripped the top sheet up to do it again. Highly entertaining for five year old stuck in a car all day.
Larry
06/18/2010 at 11:16 am
They actually sell this at Brookstone. It’s an eco-friendly simulated paper / pencil-pen device. Press a button on top and the entire page clears. Works wonderful!
I picked one up for my son for when he uses it in the car. No mess, easy for him to use, press the button start all over.
Caveat…
You can’t save any masterful piece of art but definitely a great doodling device.
Sam
06/18/2010 at 2:44 pm
The Gadgeteer has posted on this at least twice. It’s been intermittently available since late last year, I think.
It uses reflective cholesteric LC technology in an interesting way. Cholesteric LCD is used in Fujitsu’s color “epaper” display used in their FLEPia ereader. Cholesteric LCD has been under development by Kent Displays for nearly two decades (I’ve been checking in on their website occasionally since about 1998).
It doesn’t actually have palm rejection, it’s pressure sensitive with the minimum pressure high enough that a palm is unlikely to cause any markings. The basic idea is that pressure causes the liquid crystals to change from a transparent alignment (you see the black backing) to a reflective alignment (you see the color of the liquid crystals). Erasure applies an electric field to switch the crystals back to the transparent alignment.