1. There are several methods of getting data into your computer. Some include using a mouse of which there are several different types such as mechanical mouse, optical mouse and cordless mouse. You also have a touchpad and joysticks. Below you will find some other non conventional pen input devices.

Light Pen - Light pen is actually one more pointing input gadget. This will pick up on existence of light. It's a hand held pen fashioned gadget having a photocell installed in it's front-end. Once the front-end on the pen is actually touched on the display screen, the actual photocell registers a position associated with display. This kind of instrument also offers a button. An individual points to the actual object that will end up being chosen on the display screen using the light pen after which clicks the button in the pen. Light pen gadgets are utilized by technical engineers, visual creative designers and so on. These types of gadgets call for unique displays. Light pen can be used on PDA's and also other kinds of portable computers.

The electrical light pen input instrument is usually combined with creating computer software. Designed screen data files are usually joined using a light pen simply by directing it to display positions. A new place shows up on the screen in the area exactly where pen is placed which is sensed through the photocell. The pc software operated the feedback transmission of the instrument.

Digitizer - A Digitizer is also called a graphic tablet and uses a pen input device. It's a flat, rectangle-shaped digital plastic material pad. Every position to the digitizer points to matching video display. It's primarily useful for producing road maps and also engineering blueprints. The actual input gadgets stylus pen and also cursor can be used to trace sketches and also drawings to the digitizer.

Whenever you sketch upon the digitizer with the aid of the stylus pen or cursor, this converts the actual actions associated with stylus or cursor straight into electronic signals which are afterwards routed to the laptop or computer. Therefore a digitizer makes it simple to key in free-hand sketching in to a laptop or computer.

Stylus and Cursor - Stylus pen is actually like a ballpoint pen. It's utilized to compose textual content or make lines (or generate drawings and also pictures) on the exclusively developed graphics display or digitizer. Pen input devices found in several sophisticated graphic devices is called Digital Pen. Generally electronic digital pen supplies much more performance compared to stylus pen.

Stylus pen can be used in graphic programs for instance Computer Aided Design (CAD) and also engineering blueprints and so forth. It's got the convenience of removing textual content as well as lines.

Several portable personal computers make use of touch screens which permit someone to enter any data and even to enable selections in the monitor utilizing a stylus pen or a digital pen. PDA's utilize pen input devices along with tablet Computers quite often use a digital pen. These laptop or computer operates one-of-a-kind platforms also known as optical character recognition. Such a program converts written characters along with symbols to a mode which the computer systems may use and also process all of them.

The actual cursor is surely an input product. It's also used to trace sketches and also drawings with a graphic tablet or perhaps digitizer. This appears like some sort of computer mouse, with the exception of it's got a window using crosshairs, therefore the end user is able to see through to the actual digitizer. Cursor is generally known as Puck.

2. Gamepad---also known as a joypad, is the most common kind of game controller. They are held in both hands with thumbs and fingers used to provide input. Gamepads can have a number of action buttons combined with one or more omnidirectional control sticks or buttons. Action buttons are generally handled with the digits on the right hand, and the directional input handled with the left. Gamepads are the primary means of input on nearly all modern video game consoles. Due to the ease of use and precision of gamepads, they have spread from their origin on traditional consoles to computers, where a variety of games and emulators support their input. Most modern game controllers are a variation of a standard gamepad. Common additions include shoulder buttons placed along the edges of the pad, centrally placed buttons labeled start, select, and mode, and an internal motor to provide haptic feedback.

Joystick---a peripheral that consists of a handheld stick that can be tilted around either of two axes and (sometimes) twisted around a third. The joystick is often used for flight simulators. HOTAS controllers, composed of a joystick and throttle quadrant (see below) are a popular combination for flight simulation among its most fanatic devotees. Most joysticks are designed to be operated with the user's primary hand (e.g. with the right hand of a right-handed person), with the base either held in the opposite hand or mounted on a desk.

Light gun---a peripheral used to "shoot" targets on a screen. They usually roughly resemble firearms or ray guns. Their use is normally limited to rail shooters, or shooting gallery games like those that came with the Shooting Gallery light gun. A rare example is Taito's 1992 arcade game Gun Buster, a first-person shooter that used a joystick to move and a light gun to aim.Though light guns have been used in earlier arcade games such as Sega's Periscope in 1966 and Missile in 1969, the first home console light gun was released for the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972; later on, Nintendo would include one standard on their Famicom and NES, called the NES Zapper. Nintendo has also released a "shell" in the style of a light gun for the more recent Wii Remote called the Wii Zapper which comes bundled with Link's Crossbow Training.

Dance pads---essentially a grid of flat pressure sensitive gamepad buttons set on a mat meant to be stepped on, have seen niche success with the popularity of rhythm games like Dance Dance Revolution and Pump it Up. The dance pad was first introduced on the Atari 2600, called the "Exus Foot Craz" pad. Nintendo later purchased the technology from Bandai and used it on their "Power Pad", for the Famicom and NES.

Steering wheel---essentially a larger version of a paddle, is used in most racing arcade games as well as more recent racing simulators such as Live for Speed, Grand Prix Legends, GTR2, and Richard Burns Rally. While most arcade racing games have been using steering wheels since Speed Race in 1974, the first steering wheels for home systems appeared on fifth-generation consoles such as the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. Many are force feedback (see Force Feedback Wheel), designed to give the same feedback as would be experienced when driving a real car, but the realism of this depends on the game. They usually come with pedals to control the gas and brake. Shifting is taken care of with in various different ways including paddle shifting systems, simple stick shifters which are moved forward or back to change gears or more complex shifters which mimic those of real vehicles, which may also use a clutch. Most wheels turn only 200 to 270 degrees lock-to-lock but some models, such as the Logitech Driving Force Pro, Logitech G25 and Logitech G27 can turn 900 degrees, or 2.5 turns, lock-to-lock.The Namco Jogcon paddle was available for the PlayStation game R4: Ridge Racer Type 4. Unlike "real" video game steering wheels, the Jogcon was designed to fit in the player's hand. Its much smaller wheel (diameter roughly similar to a soda can's) resembles the jog-and-shuttle control wheel used on some VCRs.The game Mario Kart Wii is bundled with the Wii Wheel, a steering wheel-shaped shell that the Wii Remote is placed inside thus using the Wii Remote's motion sensing capabilities to control the game.

3. Image resolution describes the detail an image holds. The term applies to raster digital images, film images, and other types of images. Higher resolution means more image detail. Image resolution can be measured in various ways. Basically, resolution quantifies how close lines can be to each other and still be visibly resolved. Resolution units can be tied to physical sizes (e.g. lines per mm, lines per inch), to the overall size of a picture (lines per picture height, also known simply as lines, or TV lines), or to angular subtenant. Line pairs are often used instead of lines; a line pair comprises a dark line and an adjacent light line. A Line (or TV line, TVL) is either a dark line or a light line. A resolution of 10 lines per millimeter means 5 dark lines alternating with 5 light lines, or 5 line pairs per millimeter (5 LP/mm). Photographic lens and film resolution are most often quoted in line pairs per millimeter.

4. Voice recognition is "the technology by which sounds, words or phrases spoken by humans are converted into electrical signals, and these signals are transformed into coding patterns to which meaning has been assigned" [ADA90]. While the concept could more generally be called "sound recognition", we focus here on the human voice because we most often and most naturally use our voices to communicate our ideas to others in our immediate surroundings. In the context of a virtual environment, the user would presumably gain the greatest feeling of immersion, or being part of the simulation, if they could use their most common form of communication, the voice. The difficulty in using voice as an input to a computer simulation lies in the fundamental differences between human speech and the more traditional forms of computer input. While computer programs are commonly designed to produce a precise and well-defined response upon receiving the proper (and equally precise) input, the human voice and spoken words are anything but precise. Each human voice is different, and identical words can have different meanings if spoken with different inflections or in different contexts. Several approaches have been tried, with varying degrees of success, to overcome these difficulties.

A webcam is a video camera which feeds its images in real time to a computer or computer network, often via USB, ethernet or Wi-Fi.

Their most popular use is the establishment of video links, permitting computers to act as videophones or videoconference stations. This common use as a video camera for the World Wide Web gave the webcam its name. Other popular uses include security surveillance and computer vision.

Webcams are known for their low manufacturing cost and flexibility, making them the lowest cost form of videotelephony. They have also become a source of security and privacy issues, as some built-in webcams can be remotely activated via spyware.

A videoconference or video conference (also known as a videoteleconference) is a set of interactive telecommunication technologies which allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously. It has also been called 'visual collaboration' and is a type of groupware.

Videoconferencing differs from videophone calls in that it's designed to serve a conference rather than individuals. It is an intermediate form of videotelephony, first deployed commercially by AT&T during the early 1970s using their Picturephone technology.

5. Optical scanner---device that can read text or illustrations printed on paper and translate the information into a form the computer can use. A scanner works by digitizing an image -- dividing it into a grid of boxes and representing each box with either a zero or a one, depending on whether the box is filled in. (For color and gray scaling, the same principle applies, but each box is then represented by up to 24 bits.) The resulting matrix of bits, called a bit map, can then be stored in a file, displayed on a screen, and manipulated by programs.

Optical scanners do not distinguish text from illustrations; they represent all images as bit maps. Therefore, you cannot directly edit text that has been scanned. To edit text read by an optical scanner, you need an optical character recognition (OCR ) system to translate the image into ASCII characters. Most optical scanners sold today come with OCR packages.

Optical reader---a device found within most computer scanners that captures visual information and translates the image into digital information the computer is capable of understanding and displaying. An example of optical readers are marksense systems for elections where voters mark their choice by filling a rectangle, circle or oval, or by completing an arrow. After the voting a tabulating device reads the votes using "dark mark logic", whereby the computer selects the darkest mark within a given set as the correct choice or vote. Marksense is also used extensively in such areas as lotteries and multiple choice tests.

Barcode reader (or barcode scanner)---an electronic device for reading printed barcodes. Like a flatbed scanner, it consists of a light source, a lens and a light sensor translating optical impulses into electrical ones. Additionally, nearly all barcode readers contain decoder circuitry analyzing the barcode's image data provided by the sensor and sending the barcode's content to the scanner's output port.

RFID reader---is a device that is used to interrogate an RFID tag. The reader has an antenna that emits radio waves; the tag responds by sending back its data. A number of factors can affect the distance at which a tag can be read (the read range). The frequency used for identification, the antenna gain, the orientation and polarization of the reader antenna and the transponder antenna, as well as the placement of the tag on the object to be identified will all have an impact on the RFID system’s read range. Magnetic stripe card---type of card capable of storing data by modifying the magnetism of tiny iron-based magnetic particles on a band of magnetic material on the card. The magnetic stripe, sometimes called swipe card or magstripe, is read by physical contact and swiping past a magnetic reading head.

Invented by IBM in 1960 under a contract with the US government for a security system, a number of International Organization for Standardization standards, ISO/IEC 7810, ISO/IEC 7811, ISO/IEC 7812, ISO/IEC 7813, ISO 8583, and ISO/IEC 4909, now define the physical properties of the card, including size, flexibility, location of the magstripe, magnetic characteristics, and data formats. They also provide the standards for financial cards, including the allocation of card number ranges to different card issuing institutions.

MICR---stands for Magnetic Ink Character Recognition, characters are printed using a special magnetic ink which contains iron oxide. As the document passes into the M.I.C.R. reader, the ink is magnetised, so that the shapes of the characters can be recognised electronically. The characters have to be printed in a special font, the one used in Britain has only 14 possible characters.

6.Fingerprint sensor---is an electronic device used to capture a digital image of the fingerprint pattern. The captured image is called a live scan. This live scan is digitally processed to create a biometric template (a collection of extracted features) which is stored and used for matching. This is an overview of some of the more commonly used fingerprint sensor technologies.

Facial recognition system---is a computer application for automatically identifying or verifying a person from a digital image or a video frame from a video source. One of the ways to do this is by comparing selected facial features from the image and a facial database.

Handwriting recognition system---ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwritten input from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens and other devices. The image of the written text may be sensed "off line" from a piece of paper by optical scanning (optical character recognition) or intelligent word recognition. Alternatively, the movements of the pen tip may be sensed "on line", for example by a pen-based computer screen surface. Handwriting recognition principally entails optical character recognition. However, a complete handwriting recognition system also handles formatting, performs correct segmentation into characters and finds the most plausible words.

Voice recognition system---there is a difference between speaker recognition (recognizing who is speaking) and speech recognition (recognizing what is being said). These two terms are frequently confused, as is voice recognition. Voice recognition is combination of the two where it uses learned aspects of a speakers voice to determine what is being said - such a system cannot recognise speech from random speakers very accurately, but it can reach high accuracy for individual voices with which it has been trained. In addition, there is a difference between the act of authentication (commonly referred to as speaker verification or speaker authentication) and identification. Finally, there is a difference between speaker recognition (recognizing who is speaking) and speaker diarisation (recognizing when the same speaker is speaking).

Signature Verification System (SVS)---provides an organisation with the ability to deliver a signature or customer image to an operator, enabling identification of the customer.

Iris recognition system---is a method of biometric authentication that uses pattern-recognition techniques based on high-resolution images of the irides of an individual's eyes. Not to be confused with another, less prevalent, ocular-based technology, retina scanning, iris recognition uses camera technology, with subtle infrared illumination reducing specular reflection from the convex cornea, to create images of the detail-rich, intricate structures of the iris. Converted into digital templates, these images provide mathematical representations of the iris that yield unambiguous positive identification of an individual. Iris recognition efficacy is rarely impeded by glasses or contact lenses. Iris technology has one of the smallest outlier groups (those who cannot use/enroll) of any biometric technology. A key advantage of iris recognition is its stability, or template longevity, as, barring trauma, a single enrollment can last a lifetime.