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What is GfxTablet?

GfxTablet shall make it possible to use your Android device (especially tablets) like a graphics tablet.

It consists of two components:

• the GfxTablet Android app
• the input driver for your PC

The GfxTablet app sends motion and touch events via UDP to a specified host on port 40118.

The input driver must be installed on your PC. It creates a virtual "network tablet" on your PC that is controlled by your Android device.

So, you can use your Android tablet or smartphone to control the PC and, for instance use GIMP with your Android tablet as a graphics tablet (even pressure-sensitive, if your hardware supports it).

Homepage: http://rfc2822.github.com/GfxTablet/

If you want to support this project, please consider a donation via PayPal.

License

GfxTablet is licensed under The MIT License.

Author: Richard Hirner

Powered by bitfire web engineering / gimpusers.com

Features

• Pressure sensitivity supported
• Size of canvas will be detected and sent to the client
• Option for ignoring events that are not triggered by a stylus pen: so you can lay your hand on the tablet and draw with the pen.

Requirements

• App: Any device with Android 4.0+ and touch screen
• Driver: Linux with uinput kernel module (included in modern versions of Fedora, Ubuntu etc.)

If you use Xorg (you probably do):

• Xorg-evdev module loaded and configured Probably on by default, but if it doesn't work, you may need to activate the module: see rfc2822#7 (comment)

Installation

Github repository: http://github.com/rfc2822/GfxTablet

Part 1: uinput driver

On your PC, either download one of these binaries (don't forget to chmod a+x it):

• uinput-networktablet 64-bit, dynamically linked, tested with Fedora 18 and Ubuntu 12.10

or compile it yourself (don't be afraid, it's only one file)

1. Clone the repository: git clone git://github.com/rfc2822/GfxTablet.git
2. Install gcc, make and linux kernel header includes (kernel-headers on Fedora)
3. cd driver-uinput; make

Then, run the binary. The driver runs in user-mode, so it doesn't need any special privileges. However, it needs access to /dev/uinput. If your distribution doesn't create a group for uinput access, you'll need to do it yourself or just run the driver as root:

sudo ./networktablet

Then, xinput list should show a "Network Tablet" device.

You can start and stop (Ctrl+C) the Network Tablet at any time, but please be aware that applications which use the device may be confused by that and could crash.

networktablet will display a dot for every touch/motion event it receives.

Part 2: App

You can either compile the app from the source code in the Git repository or download it directly from Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.bitfire.gfxtablet

After installing, enter your host IP in the Settings / Host name and it should be ready.

Part 3: Use it

Now you can use your tablet as an input device in every Linux application (including X.org applications). For instance, when networktablet is running, GIMP should have a "Network Tablet" entry in "Edit / Input Devices". Set its mode to "Screen" and it's ready to use.

Support

For bug reports, please use the Github issues page or just fork the repository, fix the bug and send a merge request.