White board digitizer

[Asellith]

Ok so I'm sure you have all seen those digitizers that take what ever you write on a legal pad and make a digital copy of it and send it to your pc. Would it be possible to do that with a white board or chalk board? I'm assuming you need some high resolution sensors probably IR to determine the distance from a specific point and a shallow viewing angle to prevent phantom movements where the pen/marker/chalk is not really connecting to the board. And maybe a second point of reference to help select reduce the error because the board would be larger then a legal size paper.

I don't know about anyone else but I sometimes when dealing with a rather large program or project and hit a sticking point I sometimes have to grab a chalk board or white board and just go to town. After about an hour of writing and erasing I usually find a solution. I do this at work a lot and did it when I was in school. So for my home lab (currently in the design/funding stage) I want to get a white board or chalk board. Chalk boards are easier to clean but white boards are easier to read and have more color options when drawing. So not sure the route I will go. However for note taking purposes it would be nice to just draw on the board and then export to my PC. I could take a high res picture but I don't think the details would translate right.

Just a random idea I had so let me hear your thoughts on this.

[AndrewM]

White board digitizers exist, we had a couple at my previous company.  There are a couple different kinds, the more expensive one had the entire whiteboard as a sensor, the other kind used two (I think) sensors that you attached to the corners of the whiteboard.  Both kinds had special covers for standard whiteboard markers which is what determined the color for the lines in the image (and a special eraser as well).

[Asellith]

How expensive are they? I've seen special white boards that have built in digitizers but nothing to attach to an existing white board and make it a digitizer

[AndrewM]

Mimio makes one for about $900.  E-beam's is about $750.  I think we had the e-beam USB model.  I am sure there are others out there as well.

[bens]

The engineering computer lab at my college had a whiteboard digitizer while I was there, and that was maybe 9 or 10 years ago.  I don't really know any details about it other than it seemed like a big scanner that would let you print out on a piece of paper what you had just written/drawn on the board.

- Ben

[dunk]

so in work if ever we end up in a room without a digital whiteboard that and we need an image of the board we take a picture with someones camera.
you could set up a webcam to do the same. have it mounted overhead so it can see all of the whiteboard and have it take a picture, adjust the perspective and trim off any unwanted wall to leave you with a nice rectangular image of the board.

dunk.

[Asellith]

I was already considering taking notes using a webcam and documenting my projects on video and paper (inspired by I am legend ) That way when I compile a tutorial off my project I can easily clip together a video and compile notes. With a second webcam on the board to help document that would be great.  I finally got space for a workshop so I am planing it out and want it to be great. The only problem is appropriating the funds to build it but if I plan it out right then I can build in stages and in the end have a good workspace.

[R.O.B. 2.0]

I think I know what you are talking about.
My school just bought 25 of the "Promethean Boards".
I have heard that you can take stuff from the computer and mess around with it.
I think it also can regonise letters and make them more uniform.

Also, has anyone heard of Microsoft's "Surface" computer?