Finally another update to our Multitouch project!
After months of planning and preparation, we are finally ready to get the project rolling. The major bottleneck was getting a project room to store all of our equipment (which took nearly a quarter to get =[ ), but now that that's out of the way, we're good to go! (See picture for a glimpse of our great view of the engineering courtyard!)
The main goal of v3 is move towards a fully functional multitouch table that we can cart from place to place. Over the weekend (actually 2 weekends ago from this post) we managed to put together a decent frame, as well as take apart a 19'' LCD screen we're using for the actual surface. We've placed this all together to get a rather decent looking (and functioning) surface that we are able to move around.
You can see our success in the photos I've attached. It's quite solid and gives us tons of space to work with in regards to where we're going to put the camera, processors, etc.
Preliminary tests show that our lasers are a bit weak (10 mw), so in an attempt to get some good blobs, I ordered some stronger ones (25 mw) as well as IR bandpass so that the LCD backlight doesn't get in the way of the blob detection. All in all, we're simply waiting on these parts to arrive before we can progress with actually getting everything put together.
We're also working on some experimental methods to do away with the camera completely. If it works, it would enable us to build a thin multitouch surface. Thin in the sense of somewhere around 2-4 inches thick, versus the 20+ inch height required for the camera.
Hope you enjoy this little update! I'm planning on posting more updates for the projects as we get moving along, so stay tuned!
