PressurePen and MicroStylus have teamed up on the world’s first open source pressure sensitive stylus for the iPad, Android tablets and other touchscreen devices. Unlike a typical stylus, the PressurePen communicates variable pressures required for realistic brush strokes and subtleties of shading a digital drawing or painting.

PressurePen is the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign ( http://kck.st/KHhJpI ), a crowd funded project to create an open source pen that sends a signal to a tablet that varies depending on how hard the user is pressing on the tip. For example, in a drawing app, this can change the width or density of the drawing stroke. A light touch renders a fine line, a harder stroke creates a bolder one, similar to using a real artist’s brush or pen.

Charles Mangin, developer of the PressurePen, was looking for a solution for the conductive tip of his crowd funded drawing pen when he came upon the MicroStylus. “It was a perfect fit, literally. I bought a few to test out, and then contacted Don Mikell [the developer of the MicroStylus], to see about distributing a MicroStylus with each PressurePen” said Mangin.

“I loved the idea of working with Charles and the PressurePen. The Microstylus was developed out of the need to interact with touchscreens with a stylus, not just your fingers. He was taking it to the next level with the touch pressure sensitivity” said Mikell. The MicroStylus snaps into the Pressurepen and can be removed for use alone as a stylus that is stored in the headphone jack.

Why use existing parts and not develop your own? “I started out by going down that path, but quickly realized that my hand-made tips just wouldn’t cut it. Also, as an open source project, I wanted as many ‘off the shelf’ items as possible for ease of assembly and to reduce development costs. Using the MicroStylus is a great choice” said Charles Mangin.

The PressurePen can be purchased complete, but for the maker audience, a “hacker edition” kit is also available with the printed circuit board and necessary components, including a MicroStylus tip, to build your own. The plastic shell can be purchased separately on shapeways.com or printed with a 3D printer.

Both the software for the pressure sensing code and the hardware designs have been released under an open license, and the schematics, circuit diagrams and 3D parts files are available to anyone who wants to make or modify their own. These are available on the web at github ( http://github.com/option8 ) and thingiverse ( http://thingiverse.com ). Mangin says “My hope is that the open source model will encourage more creative applications, improvements and compatible add-ons to future versions of the PressurePen.”

Currently the PressurePen is in the final preproduction stage and can be pre-ordered at www.pressurepen.us.

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