It is not possible to examine all types of input device, so in this section we restrict our discussion to include at least one type of device for each of the five media types.

• Keyboard for collecting of text.
• Mouse for collecting various media types.
• Scanner for collecting images.
• Digital camera for collecting images.
• Microphone and sound card for collecting audio.
• Video camera for collecting video.
• Vehicle counting and monitoring for collecting various media types.

Be aware that often the data collected by these devices is organised into a different

type after collection; from the users’ perspective this is often not obvious. For

example when using a spreadsheet, we think we are entering numeric data, in actuality

the keyboard collects the data as text; it is the spreadsheet application that converts

this text data into numbers and displays it on the screen. Similarly a barcode scanner

is really collecting image data, organising it into text (usually digits) and sending it to

the computer for further processing.