N-trig

N-trig makes touchscreen panels and a special electrostatic stylus.

Overview

Native Dual Mode

Empowering Creativity

The new generation of portable computers, especially Tablet PC’s and pen enabled notebook computers require a rethinking of natural input strategy and the accompanying technology. Existing technology has enabled partial, piecemeal solutions limiting users to either pen or touch, or hindering their work with suboptimal speed and sensitivity.

Electrostatic pen solutions

The DuoSense electrostatic pen provides high quality active pen (stylus) support, without requiring batteries, and as such is ideal for the enterprise market. Using a conductive capacitor that is inbuilt as part of the pen, it connects to an electromagnetic field generated by an excitation coil in the digitizer. The frequencies of the conducted electromagnetic waves are controlled by the computer system, which enables a smooth handwriting experience.

Battery operated pen

Can be used as an addon for a touchscreen surface not originally designed for an electrostatic pen (no excitation coil). Requires less power from the device. AAAA Battery lasts up to 18 months.

Capacitive touch

DuoSense® dual-mode digitizer supports both pen and touch with up to 4 finger multi-touch support.

Comparison

N-trig compared to Wacom. The core of Wacom technology is a battery-less pen, which utilizes a magnetic coil housed near the tip. This bounces back magnetic field emissions from a digitizer board buried under the LCD and lighting assemblies.

N-trig uses 'DuoSense' which had a unique approach to active pen technology in that it used the capacitive touch panel for both the pen and regular touch input. This was a significant difference from Wacom’s EMR technology, which required two separate digitizers for finger and active pen input.

Acquisition

May 1, 2015 Microsoft acquired the technology from this Israel based company, for digital stylus used in its Surface Pro 3 and Surface 3 tablets.

For more information

• http://www.n-trig.com/ not available in Jan 2018
• archive.org access
• Windows surface pro artist web site