DIY Multi-Touch Tabletop "Surface PC"

notthatwillsmith writes "We've all seen the nifty demos of Microsoft's Surface PC. Now Maximum PC details how you can put together your own multi-touch tabletop PC. The article shows how you can build the cabinet and combine that with a standard PC, a decent projector, about $350 worth of assorted hardware (cameras, lenses, mirrors, and screens), and a handful of free apps to build your own Surface-like PC — without giving Microsoft $10,000."

Comments

a touchy subject

[Anonymous Coward]

and now we are discussing it...

Already slowish

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a Coral-cached print version of the article.

My retort to M$

[WaroDaBeast]

Touché.

$350 huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a $2 version

Re:$350 huh?

[Thanshin]

When people are talking about how to get cheap airfare do you suggest using a bicycle instead?

No. A chair, some baloons and a shotgun, to land when you've reached destination.

Re:$350 huh?

[dna_(c)(tm)(r)]

I would if the bicycle flew long distances safely at 100+ MPH.

I have one that can be dropped safely from 3000m and reaches speeds far in excess of what you need. Safety is guaranteed for 99.999% of the trajectory.

Price negotiable.

Re:$350 huh?

[troll8901]

I, for one, find the $2 video very interesting. At 0:29~0:32, the video showed clearly how the physics worked.

"Learning = linking the unknown to the known, so the unknown becomes known."

Most Slashdot readers are smart - they know the $2 version is non-durable, unlike the $350 version.

You, on the other hand, do not recognize the related technologies between the $2 and $350 versions.

Re:$350 huh?

[OakDragon]

I would if the bicycle flew long distances safely at 100+ MPH.

I have one that can be dropped safely from 3000m and reaches speeds far in excess of what you need. Safety is guaranteed for 99.999% of the trajectory.

Price negotiable.

But cash up front.

Sensitivity to fingerprints and dirt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that the system uses frustrated total internal reflection, I imagine it would be quite sensitive to grease from the fingers and any other dirt that changes the refractive index at the surface of the acrylic?

It's a nice idea though. I wonder if it could be retrofitted to a standard glass topped coffee table or desk?

Re:Sensitivity to fingerprints and dirt?

[minsk]

I imagine it would be quite sensitive to grease from the fingers and any other dirt that changes the refractive index at the surface of the acrylic?

That would be one of the reasons they put material over the acrylic, rather than touching it directly.

Will be interesting to see how that design ages. My group experimented with textured silicone rubber. However, after a few months of use it had flattened out and bonded to the acrylic. Painting a clear layer onto the acrylic seems to survive better, though it limits the selection of projection materials.

I think yes

[SuperKendall]

Given that the system uses frustrated total internal reflection, I imagine it would be quite sensitive to grease from the fingers and any other dirt that changes the refractive index at the surface of the acrylic?

From playing with a real Surface in Vegas, I think the answer is yes - it appeared to have a few dead zones where presses were not registered very well.

not really 350$...

[polle404]

Reading TFA, it's not really 350$, as they already had the projector and the PC.
It's an impressive build nonetheless.

Re:not really 350$...

[Aladrin]

Whoa... They had to add $350 on -top- of the PC and Projector!? I assumed that at least included a crappy projector. Ouch.

So really, instead of a $10,000 professional table with big support behind it, we're talking about a $1500-3000 homemade table that isn't going to be nearly as refined and awesome. For 1/3 of the price, it had better be pretty competitive with the big one. For 1/30 the price, it was allowed to be pretty hacky.

What about 2 mice?

[Peeet]

I've seen a lot of multitouch demos and have always wanted to mess around with the applications side of it, has anyone seen any software that allows you to plug in 2 usb mice and use that as at least a 2 point "multitouch" system? Windows 7 beta seems like it might possibly have the capability to do so with some sort of "TouchVista" add on, but other than that I can't seem to find anything for Linux or XP.

Any multitouch software I have found uses complicated algorithms to process an image from a webcam to try and deduce points from a blurry low rez low fps infrared image of fingertips. It seems like the first step (to just test out apps without complex hardware) would have been to make a driver for multiple mice, but I can't find that seemingly trivial interstitial step anywhere.

Re:What about 2 mice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Multipointer X has been in the mainline development branch of the Xorg X server for a year but wasn't released with X server 1.6.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=xorg_server_16&num=1

It should be released in X server 1.7

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPX

Re:What about 2 mice?

[minsk]

I would be hesitant to sink much work into multiple mice. You would be stuck with a very small number of touches, and probably wind up using buttons to emulate multi-finger gestures. Without good guidelines for designing applications on large touch-sensitive surfaces, you're going to have trust the 'feel' of the application. Not sure how that would play out with mice.

The reacTIVision folks have an input simulator that might be a good place to start. The TUIO protocol is common enough that you wouldn't be committed to a single toolkit down the road, though it does focus on individual touches. I heard some discussion of multi-touch-and-pressure-sensitive tablets (about a foot square) last year, but don't know if it has developed into actual products yet.

I saw one on display, there was a sign on it:

[UnixUnix]

"DO NOT TOUCH"

Will not replace the mouse / keyboard for a while

[mrbene]

It looks like this is getting less than 80% of the multitouch navigation events correct - rotating when the user intent is to zoom, zooming in when the user intends to zoom out, things like that. I hear MS Surface has the same issues.

Mebbe in a bit. But for now, it's something that looks cool.

Re:Will not replace the mouse / keyboard for a whi

[David Gerard]

Microsoft launched Surface, its tabletop computer system, in the UK yesterday.

People will use the touchscreen computer "the same way they have interacted with everyday items their entire lives," said Philippa Snare of Microsoft UK, "with hands and with gestures." Instead of a keyboard or mouse, the techno-table uses a 30-inch touch-sensitive screen that also reacts to objects placed on it. Photos are automatically downloaded from cameras or phones. A spilt cup of coffee causes the "I'm a PC" guy to appear on the screen and start shouting at you for ruining his shirt, and your fourth Big Mac of the day causes him to keel over with a heart attack and the system to blue-screen. Users then make an appropriate gesture.

Unlike conventional computers which only one person can use at a time, Surface is a "multi-touch" system allowing several people can use the screen at the same time. Stealing someone's data is as simple as sliding your phone onto the screen. "We've made it completely compatible with popular gadgets such as Windows Mobile and Zune."

Surface will appear in communal areas such as shops, hotels and pubs first, allowing the public to get used to the new technology and see how it responds to pints being poured over it and kebabs in the coin slot.

Surface is part of Microsoft's vision of the Digital Home. "Imagine your television, your refrigerator, your gas boiler running Windows Vista -- I mean, Windows 7. What could possibly go wrong?"

Re:Will not replace the mouse / keyboard for a whi

[minsk]

Considering we're not even agreed on what gestures a user *should* do to zoom and resize things, there is definitely work to be done :)

However, building these digital tabletops with a few hundred dollars and a projector makes them accessible to the dozens of research groups and hundreds (or thousands) of varied hackers who might have good ideas. Gestures are chronically tricky things to make natural and detect reliably, so we're going to need both the bazaar and the cathedrals chewing on it.

Re:Will not replace the mouse / keyboard for a whi

[zwei2stein]

Even if it works perfectly, it will not cut it.

  * You have to move your hands, without resting support. Thought mouse carpal tunnel is bad? Wait for days work with this tech

  * I have yet to see demo which looks, well, usefull. It looks like it is all about eye candy. They do a lot, but they do "random stuff" ... have photo pile, pick one at random, zoom, drag it to another pile at random. Impressive, but only if you don't think about what they do.

It is more like mouse gestures which have very low user penetration for reason. (Why draw glyph if you can just press button?). Or voice command. Voice reconginition was perfected, but noone wants to use it (its slow, using it looks kinda dumb, it has no added value if you do not have disability).

Bad LED design

[S-100]

In TFA they connect 8 LEDs in series directly to a 12V rail with no bias resistor(s). This is a bogus design and they should have known better.

wiimote smartboard

[Locklin]

My wife built one of these "smartboard" like projects with a wii remote and a single infrared LED as per here. Not exactly multitouch, but it works pretty well; calibrates quickly and you can write on a projected image anywhere. It uses the IR camera over bluetooth on the wii remote to track the LED "pen", and emulates a mouse for windows XP.

I'll be watching for a Linux version of the software. It would be pretty sweet to run presentations off my Linux netbook and be able to draw on a regular projected screen.

Also see Jeff Han's multitouch surface

[six11]

It looks like this article is implementing the system that Jeff Han made about a few years ago and famously presented at TED. I'm glad to see this DIY article out there since it is getting lots of people interested in physical hacking, but I wish it would have referenced what came before. Here's the UIST paper:

Han, J. Y. 2005. Low-cost multi-touch sensing through frustrated total internal reflection. In Proceedings of the 18th Annual ACM Symposium on User interface Software and Technology (Seattle, WA, USA, October 23 - 26, 2005). UIST '05. ACM, New York, NY, 115-118. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1095034.1095054