The race for the next revolutionary input design is an ongoing event. [Clayton Miller's] newest offering in the contest is a multitouch concept that separates the display from the screen and is meant to utilize all fingers. His video explanation includes a description of the physical input device, a software implementation, and a demonstration of how a finished system will work. After the break we’ll look at the hardware, the software, and the concept video. Read the rest of this entry »
[Jani] directed us to his tutorial on making a laptop touchpad work with an Arduino. After seeing the recent post on touch pad and VFD hacking, he couldn’t resist finding one of these to play with. He shows us how to connect it all up and offers two methods of using the data from it. The first method is to determine the direction of finger travel and the second, shown above, is to use it more like the volume control on an iPod. Source code for both is available on his site.
[Plusea] made her own touchpad using some anti-static gloves and an Arduino. This proof of concept is fairly small, but the system could be scaled quite large if you could find the fabric. She cut apart the anti-static glove, mounted it and wired it to the Arduino. A special piece is made to fit over the finger that is also wired to the Arduino. The location of where she touches is determined by the resistance between the finger and each corner. Watch the video on the instructable to see how it measures.
She mentions that there are a few different ways to build it, some which would not require anything on your finger, but would use another piece mounted behind the touchpad. The method she is currently using though, would allow for the fabrick to be any size or shape, even molded around something.
[ERASME] built this interactive globe interface for an exhibit on Inuit people and their land. The goal was to have a tactile input device to Google Earth data. The unit is composed of a half globe for location selection, a touch pad for layer selection, and a Wiimote for view changes.They had to develop their own driving application for Google Earth as none exists for Linux. The software, called KeyEvents takes inputs from all the devices and mimics keyboard and mouse control in Google Earth.
There is much more information on how they got the pieces to work together, as well as some videos in french showing the device working. One thing that stands out though is that they decided to use direct association on their Wiimote, thus stopping rogue Wiimotes from gaining control. Who would carry a Wiimote around just to hijack public displays? We would.
