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Updates

Well, I realize it’s been a while since I’ve posted any updates, so I thought I’d make a quick post to bring everyone up to speed. At this point, we have a piece of acrylic with a 0.5 - 1mm-thick layer of dilluted Lexel on top. It actually came out pretty clear. We also put the Rosco grey on top of this, and then tested it out. We definitely saw a really, really good FTIR effect. The only problem is that it’s a long way away from zero-force.

In light of this, we’re continuing to tweak our FTIR setup, but we’re also going to be experimenting with a DI setup. It’s the same principle of tracking reflected IR light as blobs, only instead of pressing down to create the effect, you shine IR light up through the glass and look for reflections off of the objects themselves. This means that not only can the table be zero-force, it can actually detect objects slightly above the table as well. Neat. We should also be able to track fiducials on the bottoms of objects with this setup, which could hold some neat possibilities in and of itself.

Here’s hoping at least one of these two methods is going to work out for us!

Comments on “Updates”

  1. Sounds fun! I look forward to seeing how it all integrates.

    I’m assuming the multitouch is acting as simply a mouse replacement and everything else on the computer is business as usual?

    James on June 13th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
  2. Actually, no!

    The Touchlib software detects the blobs, and sends that data directly to Flash (which is what I’m creating the software portion in…Flash and ActionScript 3). There is actually a different signal for a “mouse” even and a “touch” event. I receive the events (”Touch Down”, “Touch Up”, “Touch Move”, etc.), and then I perform actions based on those.

    So, we’re actually using it as a new interface, not just a mouse replacement.

    Riley Dutton on June 24th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
  3. Actually, no!

    The Touchlib software detects the blobs, and sends that data directly to Flash (which is what I’m creating the software portion in…Flash and ActionScript 3). There is actually a different signal for a “mouse” even and a “touch” event. I receive the events (”Touch Down”, “Touch Up”, “Touch Move”, etc.), and then I perform actions based on those.

    So, we’re actually using it as a new interface, not just a mouse replacement.

    Riley Dutton on June 24th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
  4. Is there an update on this?

    Datamatrix on November 12th, 2008 at 4:04 pm