We have all lost pens and pencils before. It’s annoying when that happens, but they’re easily replaceable, so you don’t think about them much. But losing an Apple Pencil? It’s a real pain. Not only is it a specialized and unique utensil, but it is also expensive.
A recent patent application from Apple hopes to save users from this aggravation. Patently, Apple reports US Patent 20230161545, which describes how acoustic resonators can be used in the Apple Pencil so that it can alert a user to its location.
Finding a lost Pencil can work the same way a user might use Find My to locate a misplaced iPhone, iPad, or Mac. The user launches the Find My app and navigates to the Devices section, and Bluetooth (which is what the Pencil uses to connect to an iPad) would be used to detect its proximity. The user can then click on the pencil in the Find My map and make it play a sound and vibrate.
From Apple’s patent filing, a schematic of the Apple Pencil acoustic resonator.
Apple
As the design of the Pencil does not allow for a speaker, Apple has developed the use of acoustic resonators. According to the patent, the resonators would be located in the upper part of the Pencil, under the cap which houses the haptic module. “The drive signal generated at the haptic module can be transferred to the acoustic resonators via a material path that mechanically couples the acoustic resonators to the haptic module.”
Apple currently offers two versions of the Pencil, and the original Pencil and the 2nd generation Pencil do not have the ability to emit sound. Judging from Apple’s patent, there’s no way to add such functionality to these pens in software. It requires new hardware and would be part of a brand new pencil the company releases in the future.
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