I’m still evaluating whether Obsidian would be a good note-taking app for me.
I prefer to use handwritten notes for the most part. I use a remarkable 2 tablet to capture these notes. I still do use text notes most of these are in org-mode format, but I’m open to switching to md.
Is it possible for me to take notes with my remarkable tablet and upload them to Obsidian? These would be stored as a pdf.
Can I create links to the pdf?
Can Obsidian do OCR on these notes which are in pdf form? If not, is there planned support for this?
In general, I’m looking for something can both store, link and search handwritten pdfs and text.
It might be better to ask this question of Remarkable communities. Obsidian can take anything you can do to a text file, so I imagine there are options, but I don’t know of any other Obsidian users with a Remarkable tablet.
I’m still new to Obsidian so I can’t comment too much on its PDF capabilities but I also use a Remarkable 2.
Keep in mind, Obsidian isn’t cloud based so we don’t have a concept of “upload to Obsidian”. For now, the best we can do is either:
Email the note as PDF from the Remarkable to yourself and you have to manually add that PDF to your vault
Use the Remarkable’s ‘Send as text’ feature and send it to yourself in an email. From there you can copy the text of the email to your Obsidian vault.
I’m using method 2. I intend to see if I can write a VBA macro for Outlook to automatically copy the text from an email that came from Remarkable to my vault.
Other than those methods, I can’t think of any other way of doing this.
I’m looking into this, too. I would prefer to use only the reMarkable for my new Zettelkasten, but that may not be feasible, mostly because of the less than stellar organisation features on the rM, so I will build the Zettelkasten in Obsidian as well, in parallel, and see which of the two I’ll be using more.
I was also looking for how to integrate my reMarkable tablet with Obsidian. Given that I’m new to both, I have initially come to the conclusion that I’ll use the reMarkable’s “Send as text” feature to just email the notes to myself, then cut and paste them into the appropriate section in Obsidian.
I have a very specific P.A.R.A. structure set up now for my notes in Obsidian, and I want my reMarkable to fit within that structure. Although I could keep notes on my tablet, I will be able to search them better on my computer. But I will not be taking my computer to meetings – just my tablet.
And by the way, the reMarkable’s conversion to text is unbelievable. It is by far the most accurate handwriting recognition I have ever used.
I have a Remarkable. It has some text recognition features and stuff. And some kinds of syncing features.
But I’m going to answer you from the context of the book, “How to Take Smart Notes”.
That book tells you to have 4 tools. “More is unnecessary. Less is impossible.”
Something to capture ideas.
The reference system (for keeping meta notes, bibliography, etc.)
Your slip-box (Obsidian is most likely what you are thinking of as your slip-box, right?)
The editor (A way to publish and write content)
I consider my Remarkable #1. It’s just a capture mechanism. 80% to 95% of the notes I take are temporary scratch notes for me to think through. I will transcribe anything useful into Obsidian in the form of Zettlekasten, slip-box style notes.
I think it would be a big mistake to try and transfer everything you capture into Obsidian. You could do it perhaps. But it would mean your source of notes is messier, and less curated.
Just my perspective. The vast majority of my Remarkable notes are going to end up in the trash. It’s a scratch pad. Same as my paper notebooks. For me, they are a tool for thinking, not for storing or managing.
I have come to the same conclusion after ten days of experimenting. The reMarkable is my ‘capture’ device. It really works wonders. Capturing, here, is more than just jotting down atomic thoughts. It’s also full-on thinking-while-writing, which may go on for hours at a time, resulting in either a number of atomic notes or longer texts or both. Thinking should be done pen in hand (serious reading, too). The keyboard can never replace the pen (or the stylus) for this. And the reMarkable, unless you’re very disciplined, makes taking notes and not losing track of them much easier than writing on notepads. I never leave the house without my reMarkable.
As the next step, several times a week, I will transfer my handwritten notes and texts to my Zettelkasten, in Obsidian, and update the reference system, which also lives in there.
Most of the final stage writing is done in Scrivener, but sometimes texts have largely taken shape inside Obsidian already.
I got a XP-Pen Deco Fun: Deco Fun Graphics Digital Drawing Tablet|XP-PEN Drawing Tablet. I used a stylus to write formulas on the tablet at the same time the notes will sync on the computer. Besides, it can annotate and comment on the Word, PowerPoint and OneNote with handwriting technology. It really can do many things with inexpensive price device. Of course, I also learn to sketch and draw for fun.
I found this Youtube video which mentions how the maker uses Obsidian and the reMarkable 2 to journal and how to copy the notes from the reMarkable to Obsidian using the reMarkable function to export a notebook to text and then manually copy these into Obsidian. Most of the video focus on the Obsidian part the reMarkable part is in the first part of the video.
He doesn’t show any example text. Maybe it’s just me, but I find that the text conversion from RM2 is really really bad. You must write very straight and clean.
Any bullets, symbol notation, sketches or deviations from perfectly clean text just causes the result to be unusable and out of order. To make it work, I have to write so meticulously and cleanly, it’s easier just to type.
I still prefer to use the RM2 as a rough scratch pad. A stream of consciousness. Freely scribbling and doodling without thought or worry about cleanliness. I’ll capture manually if something important comes up.
