Medallia Blog

Looks very promising. And i'm very curious about the extra information. What kind of software used, etc. etc.

But again, looks great!

...this actually works?

You are just too cool!

Another case of big computing overthinking everything and charging us huge dollars when your simple prototype would work just as well in many situations (for example, stationary flat table-screens for GIS use).

impressive

Looks awesome, but shouldn't you factor in the price of the glass table, camera and/or software? It's only $2 for someone who has that "infrastructure" already. Still, that's a minor gripe. Any way you look at it, you have pwned those not-yet-available show-offs.

hey, what's the music in the demo vid? sounds good.

Would love to use this to modify MIDI control data. Will you ever release the software?

This is way too clever.

Built with Processing, perhaps?

I didn't get the post finished before I left for my vacation, so I'll just leave this as a comment for now:

- The main idea is that you threshold the image into three areas: background (light blue), fingers (dark blue; these are shown as an overlay on-screen) and pressure points (not blue).

- I used a bag of dye for now, since that was easy to make. It might be feasible to tape LEDs to the edges of the table, and use FTIR-like scattering; I'd like to try that later. Actually, if you have one of those cheesy engraved-perspex-plate-with-blue-LEDs-in-the-base things lying around, you might be able to use that.

- Large areas of non-blue are interpreted as fingers. There is a mouse mode, where every touch immediately moves the mouse to that point, and a multi-touch mode which sends an NSNotification with a list of points for each frame. These will of course only be understood by programs that understand this protocol -- of which there currently exist only one (the rotozoomer at the end)

- The on-screen display is just a regular transparent OSX window. The background pixels are 100% transparent (alpha=0), and the hands show up as black with alpha 0.1 or so.

On preview:
scot: Nope, it's Objective-C. I took the "MungSaver" example from the Apple site to get pixels from the camera in a mungable format, and went from there.

Mina: Sahara 7 by Shadow of the Beat. Watch the last second of the video.

To save money on a "glass table" use a cheap piece of plexiglas from a Home Depot. You can then cut a square hole in any cheap old wooden table and put the plexiglas on top. This solution is great for all kinds of projects.

This is so gorgeous. Is there an organ I can donate to get to look at the code?

It seems like the resistance of the medium might be superior for some applications.

As if we care.

Really nicely done!
More multitouch related information on our multitouch open source community called nuigroup @ nuigroup.com

Of course its not really 2 dollar i think since the cam is a more expansive i'd say, but nice approach

This is unbelievable!!
I'm impatiently waiting for explicit instructions!
Please include every tiny detail. A lot of newbies (myself included..) are interested in building such a gadget!
Thank you!

Nice! Since I in fact took part in assembling the table, I feel part of contributing to a very cool input device. :)

Unfortunately, Erling took off on vacation just after he released this video and probably haven't had time to work on this project any further. I believe his thoughts were to release it before Apple's WWDC kicked off in case they would release some multi touch API for the iphone.

As a substitute for the glass table, he initially used a pyrex bowl which did somewhat the same trick. Or as Jack Turner suggest: plexiglas.

And what's with the fact that people get so caught up in the $2. I believe the the hack itself is what's of importance!

I work for Emco Industrial Plastics, Inc. I can supply supply the materials and any machining needed.

same concept as microsoft surface. a new thing that microsoft is making
go to the microsoft website

Except Surface isn't new, novel, or innovative -- it's simply Redmond's marketing department playing catch-up in response to the sea change in public opinion following widespread public demonstration of this technology from multiple fronts. Multitouch interface work goes back to 1982 at U-Toronto and elsewhere. Any one of the multitude of other technologies for multitouch interaction work orders of magnitude more effectively, and with much less processing delay, than tracking movement with five simultaneous IR cameras. A $2 multitouch pad as demonstrated above, however - that's noteworthy and innovative.

Thats cool! Can't wait for the application to be released.

This is really cool — any source code/further information or application available?

enter text? test, sorry

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You should mix in a little cornstarch to the water, to make it more viscous...

Then it would be like a gel touchpad (er, multi-touch pad)

VERY COOOOOOOOOLLL

U have build a sw for osx???? It's fantastic!

Please post your program because we wish to do the same things!!!

HEHEHE
Thanksssssssssss

Please, please release the software. Because it seems it just detects areas in the video that have high contrast it should work out-of-the-box with complete multi-touch displays.

can you release the source code, or the binary of this fantastic driver?
i have an xbox360 camera that is waiting attached to my powermac!! :)

Erling,

With your permission I'd like to incorporate your 2 Multi-Touch pad into my lesson plan. I think it would make a great lab project and hopefully get my students excited about computer programing.

Wow!! Please, give us more information!! It works also with non iSight webcam?

This is massively stupid in an ingeniously brilliant way. More succinctly: A really great hack.

"It works also with non iSight webcam?"
From what I've seen so far, the macam driver makes a whole lot of webcams compatible with anything that expects an iSight.

Very funny. Some people obviously just can't take a joke.

Awesome Idea, very simple – very effective!

Fantastic.. so much for the MSFT surface..

Very cool, low-tech solution. I'm wondering what software you used and how sensitive the device is.

Wow!

(and for a minute there the Microsoft Table had me impressed, You Win)

While interesting, you can't really compare this with the MS Surface or an iPhone because it's a multi touch *PAD* as in, you're touching something external to the display. Neat, tho.

OK, I think the idea is cool... but would you mind telling me what song that is? (in the video)

D

the only down is that the multitouch isn't ontop of the screen, what if an overhead projector and white fluid were used? Then the image would be projected onto the interface. that would be pro.

Please post what software you used and what not... I am most likely going to use this very soon... I have been looking into multi touch and I already have almost all of the components (I have a very good webcam and a good computer... everything else i am missing)

Tell us the long story please.

Great idea, very impressive how thinking outside the box can develop some interesting solutions.

wow... this is incredible. good work! Did you create the software used for this yourself?
DUGG

It's a cool idea and nicely done, but this kind of control can be emulated in a thousand different ways. It could be used in every PC nowadays.

Hey, you could use eyesweb software to get this camera input, process it and send as OSC message to your software.

Can someone send me the instructions for this...I am not able to see the page in full.

This is an amazing DIY demo! Been there with patenting the stuff - there's several ways of approaching the gestural recognition but few doing anything in practice! Make something concrete out of this before others will.

Your recreation of my 1998 masters thesis from is flattering. Soy sauce also works great.

http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/tom/projects/liquid/ (project page with movie)

http://acg.media.mit.edu/projects/thesis/TWthesis-lossy.pdf (ms thesis)

Open source multitouch software:

http://www.libavg.de/

nice! Very creative sensor. Have you seen the work the nuigroup is doing? They are working on open libraries for multitouch tables. Since the backend is blob tracking your sensor should work with it too.

I see gravano commented too. He's a good one to talk to about it.

Tom: That's funny -- I used balsamic vinegar for my first prototype :-)

It turned out to be too dark, so I couldn't get good images for the on-screen overlay.

Wow, this is cool !
How do you create fake mouse events and deliver them to other apps ?

impressive

Hello everybody. First of all, brilliant, it's incredible. I've been wondering this summer about making a touch-screen with my web-cam receiving a laser, with the same structure as this project(the laser was the finger, the bag my desk, and the cam was the cam, jaja). I didn't succeed very much, but now, seing this brilliant idea, I want to try it again. Erling, please, post us the software, post us what you did for doing this. I'm under Linux but I think I can adapt it from MAC.
Thank you very much,
Goodbye!!!

I am looking into this as an idea for a research project. I would really like to get your application and ask you some more information, please email me if you can. Thanks.

i think he used touchlib (http://www.whitenoiseaudio.com/touchlib/)

that was very impressive!!

thank you!

same old crapp first saw this one years ago and its shopped,i can never recover the time i wasted watching this pointless tat

Awesome. Can i doo this in XP SP2 also ? Please provide the details and the software. Just the thing i was looking in the internet for. Please share this with us. thanks in advance.

When u come back from vacations, please share the details with us.

Guys, what if camera is put looking at the screen, and monitors bright light spots. you can attach small lamps to fingers which light when you touch the screen.

Any chance we can get a copy of the source code you used to make this? im itching to play around with it :P

what about to use this blu gel ?

http://www.southwestmedical.com/Therapy_Products/Hot_Cold_Therapy/Hot_and_Cold_Packs/Nexcare_Reusable_ColdHot_Pack_-_4_x_10in/1839p0

Some useful URLS you might want to look into regarding multi-touch are my personal blog at http://www.multitouch.nl or the open source multi-touch community NUI Group at http://www.nuigroup.com

Very cool! Also funny you should choose to zoom in on Oslo & the Oslo fjord when playing with Google Earth. Dead giveaway as to your origins!
;o)
Keep up the good work!
I also liked the stuff with the balls rattling around in the iPhone (or similar device) to indicate messages and the sound of fluid sloshing about to indicate battery level. If only I hadn’t been so taken with my fossil Nokia 3300...