Built a fake Cintiq last weekend!

Ryan Clark · Sep 2007

Hey guys,

Girlfriend (hereafter "Julie") and I built an LCD touchscreen last weekend!

We followed the example at this website. (Mad props are hereby given to Drew Northcott for creating the aforementioned site.)

Basically, we dismantled a 12x12 Intuos2 and a 15" lcd, and then sandwiched their guts together to make a lovely ghetto-touchscreen!

Checkitout:

It was inexpensive and not very difficult. It would have been cheaper if I hadn't accidentally toasted our first lcd panel ;)

Pressure and tilt sensing work well. There's a bit of interference caused by the monitor electronics, but it stays accurate to within a couple of pixels.

Julie posted a detailed buildlog with more pictures at this site.
(I love how she throws a completely off-topic CrazyBump plug into her post. I swear I had nothing to do with that ;)

Anyway, the project was much fun. If you're on the fence about paying for a Cintiq and you have a weekend to spare, you might want to try this!

cheers,

-Ryan

edit- A word of warning: even if a monitor takes DC power, the wires going to the backlight might, hypothetically, still have AC power in them... and if you were to touch such wires, they might fucking burn your thumb. Hypothetically, I mean.

TheWinterLord · Sep 2007

Haha thats awesome! well done!

aesir · Sep 2007

you da man!

Ryan Clark · Sep 2007

Seriously, in this case Mr. Northcott is da man

We just followed his build step-by-step.

Rwolf · Sep 2007

lol, nice!

Asmuel · Sep 2007

I just figured I might be poor enough to get the government to pay for a real cintiq for me

yus!1! As long as I can convince them its essential, otherwise I'll electrocute myself making a ghetto one as well

Awesome job man, I should have taken electronics in school

Emil Mujanovic · Sep 2007

That's seriously cool as! Great job, I'd love to see it once you've made the custom casing for it.

-caseyjones

Jesse Moody · Sep 2007

haha i have been looking around for cheap 15" lcds to do this on. I found those directions a while back and just been waiting for the parts to show up cheaply or find good deals. I thought it looked pretty easy and after seeing someone else do it I might give it a shot when I do my custom pc tower and rig. It would be a nice addition.

Ryan Clark · Sep 2007

As it turned out, the project did not require electronic tinkering. It mostly involved removing screws and liberating the various bits from their cases. Two ffc cables needed to be extended, but those had friendly ZIF connectors on them.

The only tools involved were a screwdriver, a pair of pliers, and a couple ffc extension cables.

hawken · Sep 2007

instead of making a case, why not make it into an artists / draftsmans tilting board?

rollin · Sep 2007

this is realy scary ..

nice!!

Pavel · Sep 2007

this is f*cking rulz thing!!!
Great

Emil Mujanovic · Sep 2007

[ QUOTE ]
As it turned out, the project did not require electronic tinkering. It mostly involved removing screws and liberating the various bits from their cases. Two ffc cables needed to be extended, but those had friendly ZIF connectors on them.

The only tools involved were a screwdriver, a pair of pliers, and a couple ffc extension cables.

[/ QUOTE ]

FUCK THAT! I'm making one!

-caseyjones

Davision3D · Sep 2007

Wow, thats great!
The LCD is placed above the tablet right, how is the pressure sensitivity affected and what about destroying the lcd with too much pressure?

notman · Sep 2007

Nice work... now learn fiberglass tricks to make a sweet case for it

Unfortunately, I'm too cheap to even do this project

Ryan Clark · Sep 2007

We have a thin piece of glass over the screen to prevent damage. The pressure is actually handled by the pen, so it works fine.

Ryan Clark · Sep 2007

[ QUOTE ]

FUCK THAT! I'm making one!

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the tricky part is choosing a monitor. Some are easier to strip than others. To be safe, we used the same monitor Drew did.

Mongrelman · Sep 2007

I've very tempted to give this a shot given the cost.

Do you think you need to be fairly experienced with electronics to do this? Or are there instructions that walk you through well so most people could get through?

Great stuff man.

D4V1DC · Sep 2007

The website has some information on it though I really honestly didn't read all of it got to page 4 or 5 and gave up but it's a very neat DIY.

I was just curious to ask those who have an actual cintiq if the response time from pen-stylus to brush stroke was the same timeframe as this/his youtube Video cause it seems slightly slower to me then this Video or is it just me.

Granted its a cheap alternative and a very cool DIY I was just curious though if anyone else seen a slow response between the two videos "cintiqs".

Kevin Albers · Sep 2007

Holy Coolness! That rocks.

stimpack · Sep 2007

thats impressive! seem easy enough to case that up so its not just a jumble on your desk?

tokidokizenzen · Sep 2007

Great work man

I tried the same thing several months back and also toasted my lcd. I was using a 9x12 tablet. Unfortunately I had quite a bit of drop out near the top of the screen where the taper is thicker. I also couldn't get the jitters to go away. Those who know me will say I'm good with this sort of build it yourself shit so I'm pretty sure it's not my incompetence that stopped it from working right. Eventually ended up calling it quits $400 later. It worked fine for novelty but it wasn't good enough IMO for professional work. I decided to just spend the beans on a Cintiq. Still saving

My personal advise to anyone thinking of doing this for professional work is 'don't do it'. Buy a Cintiq.

tokidokizenzen · Sep 2007

All negativity aside, if any of you do decide to do it; Be really feckin gentle with the ribbon cables connected directly to the lcd. There are generally 2 boards along the top (vertical dots) and the side (horizontal dots) I basically handled mine a little too much and the ribbons just came off. The come off real easy mark my words! Ah shit, i'm just bitter mine didn't work

Again great work Ryan Clark

SkullboX · Sep 2007

So... why does an actual cintique cost so much again?

Josh_Singh · Sep 2007

Steve you are such a bitter old man.

Ryan Clark · Oct 2007

Behold the movie: http://juliegilberg.com/JooTiq/jootiq.mov

EarthQuake · Oct 2007

It seems a little lagged, its that the lcd itself? I've heard cintiqs can be a little laggy too. Or maybe tablets in themselves are laggy in generall and you just dont notice it until you're matching the pen up with the line....

Ryan Clark · Oct 2007

I think you've nailed it. I think tablets always have that lag but you usually aren't in a position to notice.

I've not used a Cintiq, so I don't know how the lag compares.

Emil Mujanovic · Oct 2007

I think it comes down to the processing power of the PC itself. My home PC is tonnes better than my work PC (I always thought it would be the other way around, go figure!). While doing some speed painting, my work PC would tend to lag a bit with certain brush settings while my home PC seemed to handle them without the slighted problem.
Just my 2c.

-caseyjones

SkullboX · Oct 2007

[ QUOTE ]
I've not used a Cintiq, so I don't know how the lag compares.

[/ QUOTE ]

Cintique also lags pretty notably. I used one at a wacom stand at the Annecy animation festival (so I assume they used the best setup to present their overpriced hardware) and the lag was very annoying.

Snowfly · Oct 2007

On top of the lag, the screens on the current Cintiqs don't display color very accurately, at least not well enough for the print work we were doing then. Easy to get used to though, and way better than 'hand down here, eyes up there' on regular tablets.

Cool project though Ryan and S.O.! Get a case on that thing!

b1ll · Oct 2007

I gotta say that i disagre, I have a Cintiq 21Ux and I dont have any lag, or colors issues. So maybe you guys are using version that are like 2 years old, But this one, work like a charm, I,ve had it for a long while, and No issues, and UH i use it for hours, everyday, did Shitloads of work, and No laggy or color issues.

so BUY THE LATEST!

Panupat · Oct 2007

wow I have to try that

Gmanx · Oct 2007

I just posted on the bongofish forums (where this all started) to say that I have 7 old wacom digitizer II pads for sale which are the ideal size for this kind of build. They're from an animation studio I used to work at, which is selling all it's old gear. Sheeit I might even have a go myself...

Built a fake Cintiq last weekend!

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