[moisesmariscal]

Hi all:

It's difficult to type large texts in a phone keyboard, but phones allow to store long texts.

There are some solutions to this problem: Bluetooth keyboards and virtual keyboards. Both are expensive (130 euros and 199 US Dolar) and Virtual don't work on Symbian. Both need energy and are big to carry in the pocket.

So, why not use the phone's camera to input data? I have already write a Python software that captures a moving pointer (like a pen), so it can be done. Imagine: Print a keyboard on a paper, paste in your folder and use it everywhere.

This is what I'm doing with my Nokia 3230 under Python....


I used this code to scan the image and find the red point:

def m_scan():
    global v
    v = 0
    im = camera.take_photo(mode='RGB12', size = (160,120))
    for y in range(121):
        if v ==1:
            break
        else:
            for x in range(161):
                valor = im.getpixel((x, y))
                r = valor[0][0]
                g = valor[0][1]
                b = valor[0][2]
                if r > 100:
                    if g < 100:
                        if b < 50:
                            c.point((x,y),0x00ff,width=5)
                            global v
                            v = v + 1
                            break

The code it's not the quickest because it scans all the surface everytime (it could scan small parts of the image near the last point scanned), but I notice that the camera lag is also an important problem.

Anybody nows how to increase camera speed?

Is anybody interesting in paperkeyboards...?

http://www.personal.able.es/orbital/paperkeyboard.htm

[OscarBernabeu]

Hola Moises,

I think your idea is amazing and I would like to help. Just a few comments:

Do you know this company www.penvision.se ? They made a system also based on paper working with the Nokia pen, maybe you could get some ideas from them.

In a different approach, one of the most impressive features of your program "Graffiti" is the "add the draw" effect. It reminds me one of my favourites "never released" programs: Digitizer from Real Eyes 3D . This program works like a hand scanner, storing the image for later process like OCR. Maybe this could be a better and simple way to fast type at the mobile.

Even more, ABBYY has ready for download an OCR SDK to make OCR directly on Symbian phones.

Hope this help.

[eriksmartt]

Cool project! As for camera speed, check out this post: http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/fo...ght=viewfinder

...the summary being that faster access is possible using a different C++ API, it just hasn't been coded into the Python camera module yet (and otsov's busy with the 3rd Edition port...)

[moisesmariscal]

I have done an speed test and it's very slow, so I abandon the proyect.

I have made other usefull (to me) scrpts in Python:

Comic strip viewer: I recentrly dowloaded a big amount of Dilbert strips, but using the Nokia viewer its hard (open, zoom, move, zoom again, move to the right...). So this script opens the file and blits on the screen. You move from one scene to the next or skip to the next strip. Also can make marks to recall the last strip.

Blog text extract/downloader (Python 2.4): I take this Pc script in my phone memory card, so when I insert the card in the Pc to download music or pictures I double-click on it. In seconds creates two .txt with the text of two blogs I like to read.

You can dowload the code here:

http://www.personal.able.es/orbital/...erkeyboard.htm