Trust Slimline Widescreen Tablet in Linux
Trust Slimline Widescreen Tablet is a drawing tablet that you can get for a cheap price. It is quite adequate tablet for amateur and hobby use, but lacks certain features which professional (or someone who uses it for serious work) might need. In the package you get the tablet with 25 cm x 15 cm drawing area, pen, stand and 2 extra tips for pen. Drawing tablet is connected to a computer with USB connector. Pen uses 1 AAA battery.
Trust Slimline Widescreen Tablet
As usual, package mentions only Windows as supported operating system. However, this tablet is completely Linux compatible. If you plug it in, after a while you should see that you can move cursor by moving pen over the drawing surface. And if you press the pen on surface you can open menus etc. So it seems to work out of the box. Except it does not. It kind of works with stock Ubuntu 10.04, but then it kind of does not. Behavior is erratic, and after pressing something, it may take a moment before the cursor follows pens movements.
However, it is very easy fix this problem in Ubuntu 10.04. All you need to do is install xserver-xorg-input-wizardpen package from ppa, edit one file and restart Xserver.
First of all add this ppa repository, update and install wizardpen driver
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:doctormo/xorg-wizardpen
sudo update
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-wizardpen
Then edit file (with sudo, of course) /usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-wizardpen.conf so that it looks like
Section "InputClass" Identifier "wizardpen" MatchIsTablet "on" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" MatchVendor "UC-LOGIC|KYE Systems|Ace Cad|WALTOP|Waltop" Driver "wizardpen" Option "TopX" "0" Option "TopY" "0" Option "BottomX" "20000" Option "BottomY" "12500" EndSection Section "InputClass" Identifier "wizardpen ignore mouse dev" MatchIsTablet "on" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/mouse*" MatchVendor "UC-LOGIC|KYE Systems|Ace Cad|WALTOP|Waltop" Driver "" Option "TopX" "0" Option "TopY" "0" Option "BottomX" "20000" Option "BottomY" "12500" EndSection
UPDATE! If you are using Ubuntu 10.10 then you should edit file /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-wizardpen.conf
After this you should log out and restart X. Now connect the tablet, and it should work as expected.
Tablet uses absolute position (not relative) and it will cover whole screen. In my case I noticed it covers automatically both screens of dual screen setup I have. Both buttons work, top button matches mouse right button, and lower button matches mouse middle button. Pressing the pen on surface is the same as clicking the left mouse button.
You will notice that tablet “goes to sleep” if you take the pen away from drawing surface for certain period of time. What I mean with this, is that normally if you move the pen over the tablet surface you will see that the cursor follows the movements. If the pen has been away for certain period of time, you will notice that tablet seems not to respond the movements. When this happen, you’ll have to “wake it up” by pressing the surface lightly with pen tip.
And what about KDE?
Hello
My tablet work, he often falters.
What can I do.
When I click somewhere on the stick and 1 or 2 seconds are not responding.
Perhaps you have a tip for me.
Sincerely am
If you are using Ubuntu 10.10 or 10.04, installed and configured driver according to instructions (notice the different location of configuration file for Ubuntu 10.10, then the tablet should work just fine. If you have not installed driver and configured it properly then tablet works in very erratic manner.
Hardware incompatibility is possible, but without more specific information it is impossible to provide any solution to this dilemma.
I installed the wizardpen driver and configured the file as you said. It works fine, except for the buttons. They work and don’t work. What can I do?
And, thanks.
Do you mean pen buttons or tablet buttons?
If you mean table buttons, I have never managed to get them work properly.
If you mean pen buttons, they emulate mouse buttons. Pressing pen tip is left mouse click, two buttons on pen correspond left mouse and middle mouse buttons, respectively. With stock Ubuntu kernel and NVidia graphic drivers they have worked just fine both on 64bit and 32bit OS. If you have custom kernel or some other customizations, then It is possible that your X configuration does not recognize properly core pointer and other pointing devices and that is why buttons work erratically.
This sounds a bit silly, but have you checked the batteries inside the pen. If they are low on power, then you may experience erratic button behavior?
Thanks for the reply.
I use the generic Ubuntu kernel. Battery is new, and I checked it. The problem is, when I click one of the pen buttons, I lose the ability to “left click” and I can get it after clicking the buttons crazily a few times, sometimes more.
Anyway, it’s not a big deal. I’m okay without them. Just when I saw you said buttons work, I got curious. Thanks to your tutorial, pressure sensitivity works fine and it’s quite stable. That’s what matters for me.
is this also posible for mac?
If you mean whether this tablet works in OS X, the answer is yes. I have tested it on my MacBook Pro (October 2011 model) with OS X Lion, and it works as a basic pointing device. I just plugged it in, and operating system recognized it as a tablet device. I could even use Ink and my handwriting was recognized properly. I have not tested it more than that, since I do all my image processing in Linux.
But if you mean whether it works on Mac with Linux installed (instead of OS X), that I have not tested. But I assume, that since it works in Linux PC, it should work in that combination also.
hey dude/dudette do you know how i can adjust pressure settings or does it even have pressure because i cant draw unless pressure because no point at the end of a line when i finish its annoying. if you can help plz do i relly need it to draw :<