Gaming Nintendo Switch Painting App Includes a Pressure-Sensing Stylus Powered by Sound Waves

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A popular painting app for the Nintendo DS and 3DS that relied on each handheld’s stylus is finally coming to the Switch. But instead of forcing users to paint with their fingers, Colors Live will include a stylus that cleverly uses the Switch’s headphone jack for pressure sensitivity and a better painting experience.

The Switch’s touch screen means that styluses are already available for the console, but they simply emulate the capacitive effect of a human finger and don’t facilitate other advanced functions like shortcut buttons or pressure sensing. Those features require additional technologies that Nintendo presumably skipped to keep the Switch’s price tag down, but they’re also features that can improve the digital doodling experience, as anyone who’s ever sketched or painted using a Wacom tablet or the Apple Pencil can attest.

For the Nintendo Switch version of his Colors! painting app, Jens Andersson wanted to introduce an improved experience given the system’s power, and its large screen. So the app is being bundled with a new stylus accessory that doesn’t rely on Bluetooth and doesn’t require batteries or even charging. The SonarPen instead features a half-meter cable on the end that plugs into the Switch’s headphone jack. The painting app sends an 8,000 hertz tone through the cable to the tip of the stylus, and when the SonarPen makes contact with the Switch’s screen that tone is dampened as pressure is applied. A microphone inside the stylus records the altered tone and sends it back to the Switch through the headphone cable where the Colors Live app translates the changes in volume into varying levels of pressure being applied.

 
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