Cregle iPen – An Active Stylus for iPad

For those of you who have read my previous post on the Adonit Jot Fine-Tipped iPad Stylus, you (like me) are probably on the never-ending quest of finding the perfect stylus for handwriting on the iPad.  Well, without being too optimistic, it looks as though product developers are taking steps in the right direction.

A couple of months ago I happened upon a Kickstarter project for a new active stylus, the iPen.  For those of you unfamiliar with active styli, they use proximity sensitivity in order to determine where the pen is located.  Also, they are NOT capacitative styli.  The iPen uses a sensor that plugs into the iPad’s charging port and senses ultrasonic and infrared signal in order to determine the iPen’s precise location on the screen.  Some of the main benefits of active styli are that they can have an extremely fine point, and since the stylus is not capacitative there is a built-in palm rejection feature.  This allows you to rest your palm on the iPad screen while writing.

One of the downsides of the active stylus design is that it does work natively through the iPad.  You can only use the stylus in apps that have been developed to include support for the stylus.  There is a complete list of compatible apps on the Kickstarter page (linked above).  Here are a few of the apps that I am looking forward to using with the iPen:

  1. Ghostwriter Notes
  2. Notes Plus
  3. My Notebook!

I’m also hoping that the developers of Upad integrate iPen support into a future release.

Here is a quick video from YouTube that shows the iPen in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9NxwizUBYU

For more videos of the iPen, check out the Kickstarter page.

The iPen is not currently on sale, however the www.cregle.com website suggests that it will be available to order any time now.  The bad part about the iPen?  The price.  This stylus will retail at about $89.99 (I think, but could be wrong).  However, if it works as well as they show in the videos, it will be totally worth the price.

What do you think of this stylus?  Is this something that you will buy?  Let me know in the comments.

UPDATE:  The iPen has now been released and you can purchase it at the Cregle Store.  According to the store, you get the following in the box:

1 Digital pen

1 Receiver

2 Sets of batteries, i.e., 4 batteries

3 Replaceable pen tips

1 Pen tip extractor

1 Pouch

1 Year standard warranty

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25 thoughts on “Cregle iPen – An Active Stylus for iPad

  1. Arjayel

    I looked forward to using it in Ghostwriter but there is no way to calibrate the pen tip to the drawing spot and it’s about-1/2 inch off. For example if you slide the pen tip along a ruled line, the drawn line appears almost a half inch below the tip position. The only way to get the two to coincide is to write with the pen angled about 30 deg towards the sensor, which is not usable. I wonder how they achieved such good alignment in the video? I have two pens and they both do the same thing.

    • necktweaker

      That is very strange behavior. I haven't been able to test my iPen out yet, as it should be coming in the mail tomorrow. But, I would imagine that in the next update for Ghostwriter they would add a calibration tool for the iPen. If not, the it sounds like the iPen is somewhat useless for Ghostwriter.

    • necktweaker

      I just received my iPen, and I have figured out how to calibrate the iPen in Ghostwriter. Cregle has published a video on youtube explaining how to do this. You can view the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRifHgvVSoA&fe

  2. Arjayel

    Thanks, that fixed the problem. I could not find this in the help files

  3. […] Fine-Tipped iPad Stylus by Admin on Aug.31, 2011, under iPad, iPhone If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Also, don't forget to leave comments! Comments only increase the quality of my posts. Thanks for visiting!Edit: There have been developments on a new active stylus design which gives you a fine-tipped stylus with built in palm rejection.  Its called the Cregle iPen. […]

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