Multi-touch Crop
by Brett Forsyth
Check out the work of DD11 students Morgan Roddick and Jae Ho Yoo. I am pretty sure it almost killed them but it’s pretty cool what they got working.
Bruce Sterling on the future of interaction design. sweet.
by Vinson Van Haaff
Here is as lively talk about the future of interaction design from cyberpunk author/legend Bruce Sterling. It was the closing lecture at the ‘Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign’ conference in Potsdam, Germany. He painted a weird and wonderful vision of the future filled with biometrics and wireless money transfers. Probably one of the best futurist rants I’ve heard in a long time. He shoots down talking computers (think Mr. Clippy) and runs through a piece of the large list of technologies that were assimilated by the cell phone. Check it out, you’ll feel like a better person at the end. I swear.
p.s. - The ‘Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign’ was one of the most important conferences on interaction design in 2007. All presentations from the conference are available as videos on the conference site (note that many of the lectures are in German).
Bruce Sterling from Innovationsforum on Vimeo.
Link.
Multi-touch Window Time-lapse
by Brett Forsyth
It has been too long since I have posted any news about the multi-touch. As some may know the FTIR MT I built for the program is up and running and I have started to teach how to use/develop for it. It still isn’t finished in terms of the build and definitely isn’t much to look at yet (which is why I haven’t posted photos). Several students are working on software for it this term and I will post video at the end of term when they are done.
It is no secret that I am also in the process of developing a diffuse illumination multi-touch screen. This one is going to be huge 130″ diagonal and 16:9 aspect. On Thursday I finally got it working on a much smaller scale and shot some HD footage. Here is a 1 minute time-lapse of some of the tests.
DI Multi-touch Window Test from Brett Forsyth on Vimeo.
Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the Wii Remote
by Jessica Clark
Oh, the awesomeness…
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/
Scroll down to his head tracking post, or just watch it on youtube.
WAVEscape
by Aaron Bell
I’m not sure how many of you folks keep up with the activities of CES (probably a lot!), but I wanted to mention a project that my brother developed with his company, Reactrix. Originally, Reactrix was involved in overhead-mounted displays that one walks over and causes a reaction in the image projected below. However, at CES, they released something called WAVEscape, which uses some sort of system to identify objects in 3d space in front of the screen and allows people to interact with the screen similar to a multitouch display, but without actually touching anything.
All in all, it is a pretty nifty creation!
Here is a sample video:
Also see Gizmodo’s article and related video and C|NET’s article about the product and its applications.
Multitouch-ify Things
by Aaron Bell
This video is rather awesome, partially for his creativity and partially for the great range of possibilities that this sort of technology opens up. I was rather impressed, myself, with the Wii Remote’s capabilities as a techie tool. Seems that Wii Remote hacks have gone down in popularity on the internet, so seeing this piece out of the blue is rather shiny.
Ultimately, I feel that for small, handheld devices such as touchscreen laptops or items such as the iPhone, this sort of technology won’t make much of a difference. I know for myself, actually touching the screen on those objects makes a big difference for feeling that one actually has an influence and interaction with the device. However, for a future, large-scale, display-based computers that could emerge in the future, this sort of interaction would be rather essential. If one could develop a methodology for determining positioning and movement across a large space, it would be a giant leap forward.
All in all, I think this is rather awesome and I look forward to seeing where things go from here.
Multi-touch build #6 - SILICONE!
by Brett Forsyth
Well the silicone is here. We tested it today and by golly it works! Now it did point out one minor flaw in my mad scientist ways, not enough LEDs. So tomorrow I am going to pull everything apart, again, and drill more holes and put in another 26 leds on the other side of the acrylic. Not a huge deal but a bit of a pain. Once this is done things should be as close to perfect as they can get. New pictures will be posted tomorrow.
Multi-touch build #5 - Refinement
by Brett Forsyth
It has been a while since I posted about the multi-touch. It’s not because no progress has been made. Lots has been done but through out this project I have constantly under estimated the time it takes to order and ship parts and then assemble said parts.
Polyurethane rubber experiment results are in. Turns out it doesn’t work as a good intermediate surface layer. Our projection screen, rosco grey, sticks to it and sets off the FTIR effect after you lift your finger. As a replacement we have ordered a silicone sheet from the guys over at mutltouch.nl. They have had great success with this as a compliant surface. I am assuming it works so well because things don’t stick to silicone as readily as the polyurethane. Our silicone sheet should be shipping this week. Once it arrives I will post some new videos.
We have been trying to get the new version of touchlib to work but it is crashing upon calibration startup. We also seem to be having some weird calibration issues with the older version of touchlib. I am hoping this is magically disappear once I get the new version working. There seems to be lots of touch tracking software projects starting and I am really looking forward to the opentouch project.
Dave and Tetsuya, now DD alumni, have done a small interface/interaction project with the current setup. I will post more info shortly.
We have also done the following:
- Projector has been mounted
- Wiring has been run into the table
- Front surface mirror has arrived (no ghosting!)
- 2 screens worth of Rosco grey has arrived
- Enclosure has gone through one round of beautification
I have to say the folks over at nuigroup deserve a big pat of the back for their support of the DIY multi-touch community. Their info and forums have been a big help to our project and I am sure many others. Great work guys.
Mutli-touch build #4 - Success!
by Brett Forsyth
Success has been achieved with our multi-touch build. Success being the calibration of the screen and getting the flash examples to work. There is still a long way to go before the screen is everything it could be. As you can see from the pictures the setup is fairly… um… rustic. Currently we are using the table without a projection surface. This can be painful on the eyes when you look directly into the table. The mirror, camera and projector are not mounted resulting in frequent calibrations when anything gets nudged accidentally.
Lots of other testing has gone on since the last time I posted. We found a clear polyurethane rubber and poured a sheet on the 4″x4″ sample. It seems to enhance our blobs quite a bit. The rubber allows us to use paper as a surface but the paper sticks and the blobs stay. Interestingly the 3M Vikuiti mounted to a sheet of clear lighting gel does not generate any blobs on the test screen. This was a major blow as the Vikuiti rear projection film has impressive detail and color. Instead of Vikuiti we are going to use Rosco grey, which should be here next week. Overall we are still making adequate progress and are on track to having it all together by the middle of July.
Here is our list of improvements:
- Mount the projector vertically
- Make improvements to the box fit and finish
- Mount the power supply
- Solder up a final circuit board with low pass filter
- Run the wiring through the table top so it is out of the way
- Get an optical mirror to help with ghosting issues
- Pour the polyurethane rubber sheet on the acrylic
- Mount the Rosco grey on the surface
- Mount the camera in a fixed position (possibly order a new firewire camera)
Don’t have flash? Get it here
Multi-touch build #3
by Brett Forsyth
Things are progressing at an acceptable pace. We have the acrylic, LEDs, projector, and a sample of rear projection film. I am still trying to find a clear silicone rubber from a local supplier and someone that can sell us a full sheet of rear projection film. We currently have a sample of 3M Vikuiti rear projection film. During some testing I determined that the image clarity and sharpness are exceptional. However, it is a specialized film (Vikuiti film that is) which 3M only sells in rolls starting at $3K+. Now we are trying to figure how to get a sheet. If we can’t get it soon we will just use tracing paper until we can.
Most DIY multi-touch screens mount the LEDs on the surface of the acrylic. Personally I thought this was a lot of work. In my research I found a wiki that mentioned drilling holes into the acrylic to mount the LEDs. This seemed simple and effective. So using one of our 4″ pieces I tested the drilled holes with 2 LEDs. Results showed that drilling is an effective way to attach the LEDs. On the large piece of acrylic I have drilled 26 holes on one side and soldered up all the LEDs for it. Testing on this sheet has gone well but without a table it is hard to tell how well. One thing I saw mentioned on a forum was using a metallic tape on the edges to reflect the light from the edges. I am interested to see if this will help so that is the next major test. I may also polish the holes for more efficiency.
As shown by the guys at http://www.multitouch.nl the addition of a layer of silicone rubber can really increase the sensitivity of the display. Right now a local supplier is trying to figure out if their clear silicone will stick to acrylic. They also have a flexible polyurethane that may work. Hopefully we can try both.
Things left to do: Build a table, test some silver tape on the edges, get the silicone rubber and convince 3M that giving a sheet of Vikuiti would increase their karma and sales
Here are some pictures of the build to date.
Microsoft’s Milan
by Aaron Bell
I would highly recommend watching the video above. It discusses the newly announced “Milan” project from Microsoft that is selling for $5,000 to $10,000, but looks incredible. Not only does it have the multitouch options like we saw at Dorkbot and on TED, but the wireless integration totally blew my mind.
Also, look for the giant widescreen multitouch display created by Jeff Han for playing about in Google Earth. Simply amazing.
Mutli-touch build - #2
by Brett Forsyth
Dave, Tetsuya, Ryan and I picked up a web cam (Creative Live! Cam Video IM Pro) for the multi-touch display yesterday. After searching for an hour to find the camera that could answer the question of “How are we going to take this apart without smashing it?” we found the live cam. For the multi-touch system to work we needed to make a camera sensitive to Infrared light. This required that we disassemble the camera to remove the IR filter. In its place we put two small squares of blackened film end, which blocks out the visible light. The image of this post shows the results.
Other developments include the testing of a projector and testing touchlib very briefly. We realized quickly that we weren’t ready for touchlib as it requires the screen to calibrate it. Our acrylic, 2×4″ square and 1x 20″x27″, has arrived which will allow us to test different projection surfaces. It seems that putting a layer of clear silicone on top of the acrylic makes the blobs much brighter but it looks like a bit of pain to do. For testing purposes I ordered the 4″ squares of the same acrylic. One of the reasons for this is we we want to test the difference between surface mounted LEDs and embedded LEDs. By embedded I mean placed into holes drilled in the edge of the acrylic sheet. I personally think that the embedded LEDs make the whole things simpler and cleaner now its just a questions of light transmission. Pictures to follow.
Building the Digital Design Multi-touch Display - #1
by Brett Forsyth
Some of you may have heard me talking about the idea of building a mutli-touch display for the department. Well that idea is going to become a reality over the next several months.
Dave Murawsky and Tetsuya Shiba are going to assist me in construction and developing software for the display. It is going to be a challenge for all involved.
I supposed some of you may be wondering what a multi-touch display is. We have all used touch sensitive screens before. They allow the user to touch the display in a single location. Some of the newer more advanced displays may allow two locations, like the Apple iPhone.
Last year a consultant for Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Jeff Han, presented a revolutionary multi-touch display system at the TED conference. It utilizes very simple parts and some complex programming making it all happen.
Currently there are very few of these displays about. We won’t be the first in Vancouver to build a display based on Mr.Han’s research. The UBC engineering physics department beat us to it. Their display is pretty neat. They managed to get the whole thing on a rolling platform. They also built all of their own software for the system. Jon Nakane, eng. phys. lab manage, has been very helpful to our efforts and has provided us the paper outlining how they built their display.
Dave, Tetsuya and I will be blogging about the displays construction and interface development. If anyone is interested in the project please don’t hesitate to ask more questions about it.
iPhone
by Stefan Belavy
… in case you’ve not seen it yet. Talk about mindblowing
http://www.apple.com/iphone/
