About a month ago I decided that it was time to do something geeky, so I looked at a couple different projects that I could do and picked a multi-touch system. I didn’t want to do the standard FTIR system because it seemed like a lot of people were building them so I decided to do it with lasers. I stumbled across this http://arbi.trario.us/2008/11/02/diy-laser-multi-touch-table/ tutorial and set on my way.
The first step was to do a lot of planning. How big should it be? What do I need to build it? How am I going to do something like this when I don’t know anything about the technology? Well, I decided to go ahead with it based on the list of parts that were in that tutorial plus a couple things of my own.
Once all of the parts were ordered, I decided to spec out and start building the box to house the screen and eventually the projector. Here are a couple pictures of the construction process.
Once that was built enough for me to start on the electrical aspects of the screen (and once all the parts arrived), I started on that. Cut out the corners of my acrylic and struggled with my first ever electrical circuit. Mounted the lasers in some air-drying clay and plugged it in. It worked on the first test (with a lot of little adjustments) and I have the following video to show you my first test.
There is still a lot to do with the setup, including adding the projector and a screen to touch, but it is on its way and I am very happy with it thus far. Stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks.
thanks, marc
Hey all,
I have found in the past that I learn a lot when writing tutorials. And based on the comments that I receive, they tend to help others as well.
I am in the mood to write a couple more tutorials but I would like to take suggestions as to what to write about. A couple of ideas that I have had are the following:
Box2d Physics – a thorough introduction
Something more advanced with Papervision
How to write Pure AS, no more need for Document classes
Intro to Away 3D
something else?
let me know what you think and what you want to see?