INFO 1 - Input Devices

INFO 1 - Input Devices

1. Keyboard

   • Most common input device, has all the letters and numbers with special keys. Needed and used by most computers.

2. Mouse

   • Still the most common pointing device to move a pointer around a screen.

3. Touch Screens

   • Senses when an area of a screen has been touched, either by wires embedded in the screen, or by infra-red light beams.

4. Concept Keyboards

   • Divided into areas which are labelled to suit actual use, for example, a concept keyboard in a fast food restaurant.

5. Graphics Tablets

   • Sometimes called digitizing tablets, a stylus used on a flat plate to draw.

6. Speech Recognition

   • The sounds of words spoken into a microphone are compared with a dictionary of sounds converted into computer-readable text.

7. Card Readers

   • Either a magnetic strip is swiped, or a chip-and-PIN has a computer chip and must be authorized.

8. Radio Frequency ID

   • Uses radio waves to transmit a unique serial number as a form of ID for objects.

9. OMR

   • Used mostly for multiple choice exams and lottery tickets. Uses a light beam to sense thew position of a pencil or other marks on a piece of paper.

10. OCR

    • A paper-based document is scanned and each part of the image is compared to a dictionary of known letter shapes, then converted to characters.

11. Scanners

    • Used to turn paper-based pictures or documents into digital images with a beam of light scanning them in.

12. Bar-Code Readers

    • Scans a pattern of black and white lines which represent a number, or a barcode.

13. Magnetic-Ink Character Recognition

    • Translates shaped characters on the bottom of cheques into numbers.

14. Sound Input

    • Has to be encoded into a digital signal, or sampled. Voltage is mesured, and a digital equivalent waveform produced.

15. Webcams

    • Small video cameras often used for video conferencing. Not particularly high quality, keeping file size down.

16. Video Input

    • Made of many different pictures played very rapidly in sequence to trick the eye into thinking it is continuous movement.

17. Games Controllers

    • Computer games require fast response times, so special controllers are developed, and can be developed for different types of games, for example: a joystick for an airplane simulator.

18. Special-Purpose

    • Can be made for people with disabilities. For example, foot mice, allowing foot control instead of hand control.