Yesterday, my friend at the office told me that Microsoft Surface finally being shown in our company. Too bad I wasn't there to see the things. But there is always tomorrow, so I can still check it out. Meanwhile, my interest on multi touch interface grow bigger each day. I still can't comprehend why that damn thing from Microsoft cost 15,000 dollars !@$%$^$^!
There are a lot of way to make this table yourself, basically you have to be able to do basic electronic things such as reading wiring schema, do some carpenter skills such as sawing table, and do programming stuff. In which luckily I can do all of them :D
Basically, multi touch table is just a screen being projected with a beamer, and behind it lies array of Infra red lights. The infra red lights is invisible for human eyes, so you will not notice anything. under the table, we put a camera which alredy covered with IR-pass filter. Then everytime your hand touch the screen, it will recognize the skin contact point as a point, or in multi touch term "blob". For a small table, one camera would be sufficient, but for larger table, you will need to place more cameras.
A library to develop a multi touch software also exist already. It's called touchlib. You can see touchlib in following site:
http://www.nuigroup.com/touchlib
As this technology is getting more and more mature, many people have thinking different ways to utilize this table. There are people that can use this table as a consulting means. It is indeed made for consultant to fulfill their consultancy needs!! Microsoft is trying to target a larger audience in areas such as hotel, banking, retail, restaurant, and consumer electronics. But seen the price given by Microsoft, there will be no one interested to use it, at least until the price drops, which are predicted in 2010. But hey, if you want it, you can buy it in credit though :D
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