Transnote ThinkScribe Development Notes

This page is a collection of notes that I've collected while trying to get Linux running on the transnote and making the ThinkScribe pad work with linux. This information has been collected from reading the TransNote group archive, and e-mail exchanges with other TransNote users.

I'm thinking that it might be useful to build an archive of ThinkScribe data dumps. I'll try and post a few examples soon. Each dump would consist of 2 parts:

• a portmon capture of the transfer of data from the ThinkScribe of a hand written page
• an image of the page (generated from Ink Manager Pro(jpg or png)

Portmon[Download]

Portmon is another serial sniffer available for Win9x/NT/2K. It is developed by Sysinternals. I haven't used portmon much yet, but generally I like it. Since it can save out its data into flat text files, I'll probably use it for future projects.

To use portmon to sniff the traffic between the Transnote and ThinkScribe:

1. kill INKXFER.EXE
2. kill TSPROTO.EXE
3. run PortMon, Capture->Ports->COM2
4. run TSPROTO.EXE
5. run INKXFER.EXE

ComLite32[Download]

Freeware serial sniffer for Win98. ComLite32 is developed by Realtime Control, Inc. I had used this in the past while trying to use my HP Capshare with Linux before I had an IrDA port on any of my computers. Works pretty well, but installing Win98 on the Transnote is not easy. Also, you can't export data into a text format which makes playing with the data captures hard under linux. It may run under wine... but that is left as an exercise for the reader.

Comm Settings for ThinkScribe

• 57600 baud
• 8 data bits, parity none , 1 stop bit

A list of things I've discovered regarding the protocol. Eventually this will be changed to a listing of the various message types, the conventions for using them, and how to decode the stroke data, but since none of that is available yet...

1. Message Start [C0 0A]
2. Message End [C1]

It is suspected that the Crosspad may use a similar protocol to the ThinkScribe. There is a protocol description for the crosspad available here.

Transnote TouchScreen Development Notes

Thanks to the help of Girts Folkmanis there is now a working driver for the TransNote's touchscreen under linux. [Download] A calibration utility is also include. More information can be found in the README.

The touchscreen does not appear to use any of the protocols supported under XFree86. It uses an ASCII protocol. The protocol is very simple. While in contact with the screen a string is written to the serial port indicating the current position of the contact. When released a string is written indicating the position of the release and updates stop.

The strings look like this:

contact made:
T****,****
contact ends:
R****,****

**** indicates a 4 digit number that corresponds to the X or Y position of contact with 0,0 in the lower left corner. (A calibration utility will be needed to adjust the active range.)

We're currently looking into modifying one of the existing XFree86 touchscreen drivers to handle input from the TransNote.