Mobile phones and tablets like the iPad have a capacitive touch screen. That means the screen will only respond to touch commands from human fingers and not the stylus pen that may have come with your old PDA.

Make a Stylus Pen on your Own

Touch screen stylus pens are pretty inexpensive and you can easily find them on Amazon.com or Ebay.com for a few bucks. For instance, the Pogo Sketch stylus which is pretty popular among iPhone (and now iPad) users, costs less than $10 and you can even use it with the multi-touch trackpad of your Macbook.

That said, if Amazon won’t ship the stylus to your country or if you have some free time, why not make your own stylus that’ll work with iPhone, iPod, iPad and all other capacitive touch screen devices.

To create your own capacitive stylus, all you need is an electric wire, an old pen (with either a plastic or metal body) and some conductive foam.

Conductive foam is often used in the packaging of electronic chips and integrated circuits so if you have bought some computer component in the past (like extra RAM), you may already have all the required material in your home.