This hardware project aims at building a USB bridge for ADB or Serial-based Wacom/Calcomp tablets and effectively convert serial/adb tablets to USB.
This is a C++ based project meant to run on the AVR-based Teensy 2.0 hardware. Java-based configuration utility running on Win32/64, Mac OS X & Linux.
NOTE: Soldering is required to perform a tablet conversion. This is done at your own risks.
Download Latest in GitHub Releases
Out of the box, this project only works on the ATMega32U4 CPU (for other CPUs you need to recompile it and most probably make changes. The Teensy 3.x are completely different. Only the name is the same).
Starting with version 0.16, it is now easier to flash it on about any ATMega32U4-based board (before it was too large to fit into non Teensy 2.0 boards and you had to wipe the bootloader with external hardware or recompile to drop features and reduce the size).
| Project | Platform | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Serial/ADB to USB bridge | Teensy 2.0 | Basic functionality working |
| Waxbee Config | Java | Done |
| ADB Sniffer | Arduino UNO | Done |
| USB virtual serial port | Teensy 2.0 | Done |
| Tablet | Tablet_Model | Status |
|---|---|---|
| ADB Ultrapad/Digitizer/DigitizerII/ArtZII | UD-xxxx-A | basic pen functionality |
| ADB Intuos | GD-xxxx-A | Non functional yet. See ADB Intuos section below. |
| Serial Penenabled (TabletPC) | (various) | (ISDV4) Basic Pen functionality works |
| Serial Penenabled TabletPC Touch | (various) | (ISDV4) not working/touch not supported |
| Serial Ultrapad/Digitizer II/ArtZII | UD-xxxx-R | (Protocol IV) is working (basic pen functionality). |
| Serial ArtPad II | KT-xxxx-R | (Protocol IV) basic pen functionality |
| Serial Intuos | GD-xxxx-R | (Protocol V) all tools supported, menu strip works when emulating USB Intuos 2 |
| Serial Intuos2 | XD-xxxx-R | (Protocol V) all tools supported, menu strip works when emulating USB Intuos 2 |
| Serial Topaz | Protocol implemented but largely untested |
| Graphire 3 | Basic functionality works |
| Intuos2 12x18, 12x12, 9x12, 6x8, 4x5 | All tools and menu strip working. Note that Intuos2 does not have official Windows 8 drivers as of this writing. |
| Intuos5 | Basic pen functionality. (Limited templates “UD-1212-R to Intuos5 S” only for now. See Intuos5 talk below.) |
| Bamboo Touch | Early coding stage. Development not far (superseeded by Intuos5 work) |
Latest Template list: (bundled in the distribution zip) https://github.com/popbee/waxbee/tree/master/WaxBeeConfig/config_templates
Native libraries not well handled and specific to Windows for now. (code is present for other platforms but not compiled). Native libraries are not needed if you “flash” your Teensy using PRJC.com's Loader utility (use the “generate hex file” option).
- Simon Stapleton to get ADB started and immense work for the upcoming support for Intuos ADB.
- Intuos1/2 Tools & serial number support by Chris Dragon of [www.dracoventions.com]
- Portions of the code (and mostly understanding) from the open source Linux Wacom driver
- prjc.com for the basic USB & HID code for the Teensy
- Thanks to all people helping out!
Some rough instructions to interface ADB Wacom tablets here: Interfacing ADB
This project implements a virtual Serial port on the Teensy 2.0 specifically targeted to talk to tablets for testing purposes (original code courtesy of prjc.com - forked from V1.7). Please check out http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/usb_serial.html
In the download section, there is a tool (Win7 64 bits tested only) that will detect a wacom device and will dump the packets being received. Some packets are decoded. This is great for testing/debugging purposes.
If you want to get your hands deep into the code, well, Chris Dragon attempted to makeup a simple procedure to have a working development environment. See here: http://forum.bongofish.co.uk/index.php?topic=2059.msg16167#msg16167
For the ADB Intuos (Model numbers GD-xxxx-A). We do not know how to interpret the ADB data. We think we correctly read the "bits", but interpreting them is far from conclusive. The weird thing is that there isn't that many bits to look at! We talked to an internal Wacom person (that someone had a contact to). But Wacom stubbornly refuses to disclose the information for this old/unsupported technology. **EDIT: we eventually cracked it. Thanks to Simon Stapleton - Great Wizard of the Classic Mac and ADB! https://github.com/tufty/adb-intuos Story: http://forum.bongofish.co.uk/index.php?topic=2387.msg19968#msg19968
New emulation support for Intuos5. This will help enabling three things:
- Support for more recent OSes. There are official Wacom Intuos5 drivers for Windows 8/10 and MacOSX Lion up to El Capitan.
- Custom Buttons: Since Intuos5 have pads and lots of buttons it might be easy to eventually use that to map custom keys or devices. (Contact me if in need of this).
- Custom Touch: Intuos5 also have touch, so it would be feasible to convert a custom touch device into simulated Intuos5 touch packets. (feasible but probably hard)