Connecting a pen display

Overview

Connecting a pen display to a computer can sometimes be a challenging task. This document explains the fundamental things you MUST understand to make it all work.

For most people, you will be able to connect your pen display to you computer and it will "just work" but sometimes the situation is more challenging:

You may not know how to connect things
You may be unable to connect things physically
You might have to troubleshoot problems
You may not be sure if a pen display you want to buy will work with your computer

This document will help you in all those cases.

Basics

Fundamental requirements

For a pen display to work correctly, three requirements must be met:

The pen display MUST

Receive enough POWER
Be able to send DATA to your computer
Receive a VIDEO SIGNAL from your computer

From these fundamental requirements, we can explain, plan, and troubleshoot everything about connecting pen displays.

ALL THREE requirements MUST be met to fully use the pen display.

Display connector types

This document is going to talk about connectors a lot. So you need to know what they look like first. Read this guide on different display connector types before you continue.

Categorizing connection options

Remember that one of the fundamental requirements is that the pen display MUST receive a video signal.

We can categorize all pen display connections by which cable is used to transmit the video signal.

The options for such a cable are:

HDMI
USB-C

HDMI and USB-C cover 99.9% of the cable options for transmitting a video signal to a pen display.

YES, there are a few pen displays that also support DisplayPort cables. And a few very old pen displays support VGA cables.

Detailed connection instructions

See the following docs depending on the kind of connection you want or need to use.

Troubleshooting

"NO SIGNAL": When the pen display does not receive a video signal

When you've connected your display you might see it show a message saying NO SIGNAL. Here is a troubleshooting guide to work through the NO SIGNAL problem.

When the pen display cannot send data to the computer

See: https://docs.thesevenpens.com/drawtab/troubleshooting/tsg-tablet-driver-does-not-detect-tablet

When the pen display does not get enough power

TBD