Writing things down is a powerful form of expression going back thousands of years. For field engineers accustomed to gathering around a paper map and penciling annotations, bridging the gap between digital and tangible seemed a distant dream until recently.  On the GIS side, the pen will be a natural for updating the sheets in order to maintain mapbooks. Read on for more about this exciting Digital Pen Technology from Adaptx and Capturx for ArcGIS

It all started with Dick Tracy and his radio wrist watch. Now we have a pen that is a data collector. The Adapx digital pen is both Bluetooth-enabled and a USB device. The pen weighs just over an ounce and is about the size of an average ballpoint pen. Communication is either USB 1.1 standard, USB 2.0 standard, or Bluetooth 1.2 standard. It operates in temperatures from 32 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. On standby the lithium-ion rechargeable battery lasts up to ten days between charges (if the cap on the pen is off, the unit is on standby). When in use the pen will operate for four hours or longer and store up to 50 pages between transfers. Charging in the cradle takes two and a half hours.

The potential uses for such a pen are huge. For surveyors and map makers, let's start with making field notes on an ArcMAP. Using the pen, notes can be written directly on the map. These notes become data that can be transferred by Blue Tooth or by inserting the pen into a USB cradle. Once the data is transferred it creates its own layers and puts all of the data directly on the ArcMAP in the computer. The field person can draw polygons, arcs and points in layers the same as in ArcGIS. Freehand annotation may also be added.

How does it work? The ArcMAP has to be printed with a postscript printer (in this case an inexpensive OKI C6150). Holding the map up to the light, the edges of the map appear slightly grayish. What you see is a very precise Anoto grid pattern. When you write on the map, the pen actually reads the points on the grid and stores them in memory. When you transfer the data, the pen puts the data on the layer you created with the colors you have created, and stores the memorized points on the correct layer. The data now becomes part of the original map. Now your data is the same structure as the normal ArcGIS layers and can be manipulated in the same way with the ordinary ArcGIS commands.

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