A peripheral device is a device that can be connected to a computer such as a mouse or a scanner. There are three types of peripheral devices, input, output and storage. Today we will be looking at peripheral devices under the input group.
Input devices send data to the computer. Keyboard Keyboards use keys which the user can press to input text or even to interact with the software. Keyboards can be connected to a computer through wired or wireless methods. Laptops have inbuilt keyboards.
You can use a keyboard to access common commands through a combination of keys. We call this a shortcut. For example, to copy, we press Ctrl and Z.
You can control the pointer on the screen using a pointing device. The most commonly used pointing device would be the mouse. A mouse uses an optical sensor to recognize its movement. The sensitivity of a mouse depends on the surface it is on.
Working a mouse on the bed is close to impossible, but you can easily navigate a mouse on its mouse pad. A tracker ball is rolled to move the pointer. There are no buttons in a tracker ball. Trackpads are commonly found on laptops.
The surface of the trackpads will sense the fingers movement, presses and even touches. If you are a gamer, you would be familiar with joysticks, which are found on game controllers used to move sprites around. A graphics tablet is a flat pad that is used with a stylus.
This is popular between digital artists and designers since it is used to draw and write. Another input peripheral device is a A scanner uses light sensors to record physical documents and save as a digital file to the computer. An OCR allows scanners to read a character on the document and store it as a text file.
OMR allows scanners to detect simple marks on a document. OMR is commonly used to mark multiple choice questions. A barcode is a pattern of lines and gaps that can be read by barcode scanners.
You can use barcodes on a parcel for the purpose of tracking. The barcode will represent letters and numbers. Barcodes can be separated into linear and matrix codes.
Here's an example of a linear code. You would have seen this in a supermarket. A matrix code is more commonly called QR codes.
A QR code is a newer method. It can hold much more information than linear codes and can be scanned from any angle. A webcam is basically a specialized camera.
They usually have inbuilt microphones too. You can use a webcam as a security camera and to stream images or videos onto the internet. Microphone A microphone's main purpose is to capture sound. It uses a diaphragm which moves when air hits it.
This would produce an analog signal. The microphone then converts the analog signal to a digital signal using its sound card. Well, that's all for today.
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