Comments on: reactable: visual, interactive synth

By: mkalten

mkalten — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 15:08:54 +0000

thanks to all of you for your constructive comments. I just wanted to add that we in fact "only" published the reacTIVision computer vision component as open source software.
nevertheless I think our page states clearly that this is a software framework for the tracking of fiducial markers, which allows you to build applications for your own tangible interface tables. we also provide a lot of example projects, and on the sourceforge site there is a small community emerging that already made some of their own efforts available to the public. and yes, one indeed needs some programming and hardware skills to construct such an interface.
I personally think that we actually provide a useful tool, which makes the construction of TUIs a lot easier for a skilled audience. it is definitely not an application for the casual home computer user though.
have fun, Martin.K

By: steve

steve — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 09:20:39 +0000

the fiducialâs are like that because there are about 180 different shapes. they needed something to allow that number, supposedly they are trying to expand to over 200. its a shame they don't have a proper âhow toâ, the notes are very technical and minimal. i had already bought an lcd projector for this a while back as i was going to make one as my next project or two, but no gui is a sort a killer isn't it. i'm still going to do it without, but that sorts of dulls my excitement

if anyone does manage to get a âhow toâ together please post it! oh and something people seem to miss is that there is a curved mirror used to fisheye the projection. i havenât read enough to figure out how, but it and another app needed to calibrate it are required to get it to read a larger then lets say text book sized screen.

By: tyler

tyler — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 21:30:54 +0000

yeah, i kinda figured that...
most of these 'art installation' type things are not released as open source, or even binaries.

bummer though, this would have been really cool to build.

By: bgugi

bgugi — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 18:27:37 +0000

first off, THE SOFTWARE IS NOT ENTIRELY OPEN SOURCE!! only the object tracking software is open source, the gui and tone generating software are not open source, nor do the creators have any plans of releasing them to the public. sadly their page is not the clearest on this subject, it should explicitly tell you that you need some major programming skill to get what they got, personally, i feel it is borderline false advertising. either way, the main entry should be edited for this information.

By: benj

benj — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 21:40:56 +0000

...I'm not as technical as you folks, but it seems like this could be done working with MIDI messages and Jeskola Buzz. I mean it won't help you with the GUI, but if you had something converting the tabletop interface interaction to MIDI messages, it seems like you would be half way there....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeskola_Buzz

By: wolf

wolf — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 00:19:44 +0000

i wonder what the reasoning was behind the odd symbols used for piece identification, it would seam to me that there would be more easily tracked and differentiated symbols than those used.

By: datadreamer

datadreamer — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 18:49:10 +0000

The predecessor to this type of interface was the Audiopad by James Patten, also of MIT ( http://www.jamespatten.com/audiopad/ ). I personally feel that eliminating the tangible elements while retaining the temporal type of interaction is a more flexible path to take, such as jeff hans multi-touch interaction system ( http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/index.html ).

By: tyler

tyler — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 03:23:50 +0000

yeah, i just noticed, they don’t provide the GUI for this project, all they have is the fiducial marker detection software (the camera interface), but not the table display. bummer, as i really wanted to build this at my school…

By: Metroid48

Metroid48 — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 01:51:56 +0000

Neat!

However, I've been unable to get it to work. I've got a camera image, and it identifies the symbols. However, they don't seem to offer the software that creates those cool images/sounds that they use.

By: conor

conor — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:28:41 +0000

That is sick! I’ve always wanted something like this. Kinda reminds me of the desk used in that movie “The Island” (the desk was really the best part of an otherwise crappy movie)

By: nomad

nomad — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 22:24:48 +0000

needs to play chess. :P

By: blastik

blastik — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 16:53:05 +0000

ahahhaha made in SPAIN!!

:-)

By: dragonkillernz

dragonkillernz — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 13:45:45 +0000

Man that's crazy. I need to think for a project to build this year for my course and something based on this would be awesome although probably out of my league for now, I'd imagine.

Not to mention I have no money.

By: chin

chin — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 05:58:24 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDDhbHrLSnk

By: tyler

tyler — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 05:16:27 +0000

wow, this is really awesome!
just out of curiosity, does anyone know of a howto, or mabye some instructions for setting this up? i downloaded many of the programs, but i have yet to find the one that actually does the MIDI sound output and the tabletop vis.

I ask this because my school would love to see something like this, and we have a few old projectors laying around that would be perfect for this.