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.

The implementation is pretty simple. A pressure sensitive and proximity sensitive pad is used as the interface. The hardware can tell when your fingers are resting on it and when there are pressure increases for “clicking” inputs. This is basically a very large laptop touch-pad that can also sense pressure. This removes the issue of hands obstructing the screen that you encounter with multi-touch displays.

[Clayton] goes further with his design. He’s come up with a Graphic User Interface concept that should be incredibly simple to implement. The example is a Linux-based system that modifies how, where, and when menus and windows are used. The multi-touch pad has zones to the left and right edges that control the menu system. A single finger acts in the same way a mouse cursor does. Two fingers work for click-and-drag as well as pinch zooming. Three fingers do the same for different windows.

The video is well made and the concept seems like it could be right around the corner. Possible caveats to widespread adoption include the learning curve for a transition from a mouse to this, as well as the dexterity necessary to use it well. We’d like to get our hands on one, and would be interested in working with something similar to the BumpTop to manage data and organize our digital storage in a more physical way.

[Thanks Tex©]

[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.

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.

[thanks Leucos]