Hynds|Studio

I was pretty disapponted today to find out that Radioshack is slim on parts for my touchtable. They carry the IR LEDs I would need if I were building the FTIR table, but they don’t have any of the IR lasers needed for the laser design. They also only carry the IR LEDs packaged with the detectors making them pretty pricy at $3.49 per pair. They don’t sell the IR LEDs seperately, which is pretty stupid in my opinion.

I’ll post some concept drawings of the table I drew up so you can get a better idea of what it looks like and how it works. I don’t have any set dimensions yet, but I do have some design goals I want to meet. I’m aiming to make it coffee table sized and look good enough to set in the living room. It’ll have wifi connectivity so the only cable that needs run into the unit is the power cord. The prototype will be running from a disassembled PowerBook, but I’ll probably make another from PC parts (running some version of Linux).

More to come.

This past fall I started a strong interest in multitouch technology, specifically in FTIR (Frustrated Total Internal Reflection) which uses inferred light directed to reflect inside the walls of a clear piece of acrylic. When an object (or finger) is pressed onto the surface, it reflects the inferred light directed towards a camera. The camera is driven by software which reads the “blobs” created by the reflections and reacts accordingly. FTIR surfaces are somewhat complicated to design, involving many IR LEDs and are not as sensitive to touch.

Being the Apple geek that I am, I recently read an article about a laser-based solution that reduces the production cost and time by a large amount while at the same time increasing the touch sensitivity of the surface by threefold. So you may be asking yourself, what does lasers have to do with Macs? Georg Kaindl, the designer of Touché (a multitouch framework for OSX), learned of this technique and designed his new table implementing this technology. Now that I have some funds to invest, I’ll be building my own laser-based surface for my own multitouch table. Naturally, I’ll be posting all my results for you to see.

The first step is to find a sheet of acrylic. I’m going to start calling around to my local sign and glass stores and see what I can find. Since I’m using a laser-based surface now instead of the previous FTIR plans, I won’t need to worry about polished ends. In fact, as long as the surface is clear, I could probably get away with any other clear surface material. This may open some options for more cost effective solutions.

I’m going to start looking around for for some local electronics parts stores too. I can find most of the parts online (suchas the lasers, etc.) but it wouldn’t hurt to find good deals locally, especially if I can get them from reputable vendors. I’m always hesitant about ordering products online from companies I’ve never heard of.

I’ll keep you posted.