Interesting method to create a multitouch surface:
I guess most of the people reading this will have seen some of the multi-touch demos by Jeff Han, Apple and Tactiva. I wanted to play around with some ideas that required a multi-touch pad, but there aren’t any devices available (Tactiva aren’t shipping…)
Long story short, I made a simple one from a plastic bag, some dye and a camera.
This is interesting, but there are a couple problems with it. First, it is just a multitouch surface, not a screen, making it a lot different from Jeff Han or Apple. There is no projection onto the back, and I can’t see an easy way to ever project onto or into water or other liquids. Secondly, $2 is pretty cheap, but you get what you pay for. You might want to spend $3 to get the heavy duty freezer ziploc so that it would last a week of touching rather than an afternoon. A true FTIR screen made of plexi or glass will be more expensive, but the screen itself is never the expensive part. A fancy FTIR screen in an enclosure might cost $300, but that is still nothing next to the computer, projector and software needed. And a plexi FTIR screen will probably give better blobs, since not the whole surface is going to morph when pressed on.
That said, it is still an interesting exploration and use of what I am assuming is touchlib.
[Via Daily Irrelevant]