[David Revoy] recently picked up a brand new Cintiq 21UX, and while he liked the drawing pad overall, he was less than impressed with the tablet’s buttons. He says that most 2D linux apps require a good bit of keyboard interaction, and the built-in buttons just were not cutting it.

After seeing a fellow artist use a joypad to augment his tablet, [David] thought that he might be able to do something similar, but he wanted to add a lot more buttons. He dug out an old Logitech game pad that was collecting dust, and disassembled it, rearranging some buttons in the process. Once he was happy with the layout, he built a cardboard enclosure for the PCB and hooked it up to the Wacom via USB.

He spent a few minutes mapping buttons to key presses using Qjoypad, and was up and running with an additional 14 buttons in short order. He says that the extra buttons make his job a ton easier, and add a little bit of comfort to his long drawing sessions. We like the fact that it is a non-permanent fixture, and that he was able to repurpose an old game pad in the process.

Check out the video below for a quick demonstration of his drawing pad hack.

[via Adafruit blog]

[Lesa Wright] just started selling enclosure kits used to convert a Wacom tabet into a Cintiq clone. You need to start with your own Wacom tablet, there are kits for four different models. You’ll also need to track down some other parts: a compatible laptop LCD screen, controller kit, and some cable extenders. From there, the kit takes over, with several pieces of laser-cut acrylic needing to be glued together properly, then a surprising number of spacers need to be cut from foam board in order to mount everything..

The kits come in at around $225. That might seem a bit steep since you need to bring your own electronics to the party, but have you checked out the price of the original Cintiq? You can expect to drop about twelve-hundred bones on a ready-to-use model. Before you take the dive, you should watch their collection of assembly videos, it’s quite a process.

Reader [Chad Essley] asked us:

“I’m wondering if the vast knowledge base of HackADay’ers out there might know of some way to turn almost any laptop into a touch screen of some kind. Actually, any surface.”

He has an older Wacom Tablet, and would like to be able to add resistive touch screen capabilities so that he isn’t forced to use the Wacom pen. Being an artist and part time hacker, he even summed up the question in a comic-style post.

We know of tools such as the EZscreen instant touch:

[Jon] wanted to have some fun with the Graffiti Research Lab’s LASER Tag. Unfortunately his computer wasn’t quite up for the challenge of detecting the laser pointer with a webcam. Not to be discouraged by this hardware limitation, he purchased a used Wacom tablet and threw together some code to make it work with the GRL display software. Now designs can be scrawled on the pad and the projector displays them with the familiar dripping paint effect.

As with most electronic musical instruments, we saw this in the tip box and expected the usual random noises to show off the instruments range. Consider us pleasantly surprised. They cut strait to it and showed us what la Guitare à crayon really is. It is an instrument of both audio and visual art. You draw while you play.  The guitar appears to have a wacom attached to the front where you would normally strum. different areas of the wacom seem to effect the music much like a string being plucked. In one of the videos we see some fret board action as well. Watching the screen, we can see that she is drawing a picture, and we are in fact hearing that picture being drawn. The site has a section for source code, but states that it will only posted if there are requests. We are officially requesting it, we want one. May we suggest some improvements? Get some color variation, possibly opacity too. Gimp can do it with the wacom. We can’t wait to see how this project matures. How about another video? Watch it after the break.

Several people have taken it upon themselves to fashion Mac tablets of their own, varying from extremely professional looking finishes down to duct tape and wire. Lets take a look at some of the more popular ones out there.

First lets go to the place that started many of these projects. Though not strictly a Mac tablet, the projects at Bongofish.co.uk deal with making your own Cintiq. The instructions are quite in depth and the forums have several Mac projects to view.

Back around 2004, [Joseph DeRuvo Jr.] put together this fantastic little mod. He grafted a Troll Touch screen to a Mac laptop and made a custom case for it. He did a fantastic job of enclosing everything and making it look great. One cool feature is that the cover that protects the screen, folds back to form a stand when needed. This guy put a lot of hard work into this and it shows.

Another extremely polished model is the iTab. Inspired by the DIY Cintiq at Bongofish, [wiestudios] has put together this beautiful piece. Going more with Wacom than Mac style, it’s another fine bit of engineering. It even has an apple and crossbones etched in the back!

Polish isn’t everything though, sometimes simplicity can bring a project into the hands of the average Joe. Check out [Florian Mourer]‘s ongoing project. He plans on building a custom enclosure at some point, but for now he’s got a pretty simple modification working. Again, this one uses a Wacom board so it is pressure sensitive. Unlike the others, he is limited to only a portion of the screen being sensitive due to the size of the tablet he had available.

Our very own [Caleb Kraft] has also ventured into the area of making Mac tablets. Using a cheap Wacom board, some duct tape, a screw driver, and a torx wrench, he shows us how to build a pressure sensitive Mac tablet in 15 minutes.

With the advent of the iPhone, it seems that a Mac tablet should be on the horizon. This is just one of the many cases where hackers have the technology first.