Joojoo Alternative OS Installations

June 16, 2010 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

Joojoo hacks are starting to trickle in as non-fanboys get their hands on the iPad alternative. The custom OS forum for the device tells the tale of successful installs of Windows 7, OSX, Android, and Jolicloud.

So far the only one to have a how-to is Windows 7, but we’re sure that will change quickly. When Microsoft’s offering is installed on the device it get about four hours of use per charge which is fairly decent. We’d love to get our hands on one and try it out with Android but the $499 price tag is still a hurdle for us. We’re not saying it’s over priced, as it comes with a lot under the hood. Even at that price we think it blows the aPad out of the water.

[Thanks Andy]

Commercial Webcam Multi-touch Coming Soon

May 27, 2010 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBgg33J695I]

It looks like Toshiba has a webcam-based multi-touch display on the way. The video shows an iPod-esque photos album interface where the user stands in front of the display and manipulates it with both hands. The difference between this and some of the other multi-touch displays we’ve seen is that there is no touching necessary (goodbye fingerprints!). The user’s image is superimposed on the screen in a way that reminds us of the original Playstation Eye. Obviously this is much more refined, making us wonder if it’s the better camera, better processing, or both.

[Thanks Risingsun]

Bonfire – Interactivity Using Pico Projectors And Cameras

April 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3MZYRAZJNk]

This video shows a demonstration of Bonfire, an additional interface for computers. It consists of a pico projector and camera hang on the back of either side of a laptop. The projector displays information on the table top and the camera monitors the area for interaction. It can recognize your hand or objects such as a smartphone or headphones and react accordingly. An accelerometer in the laptop picks up tapping (we’d guess you have to tap pretty hard) and there is also support for gestures. This was presented at 2009 UIST and unfortunately the published article is not available for free [Thanks for the link Ciflet].

We hope to see this kind of thing, as well as skin based input, come to the market some day. Until then, you’ll have to build your own.

[via Procrastineering]

Massive No-touch Physically-interfaced Display

March 23, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 23 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bHWuvzBtJo]

[Daniel] wrote in to show us the project his group has been working on. It is a massive display wall consisting of 28 projectors and 30 computers. With a resolution of 7168×3072, viewing a 13.3 gigapixel image is a treat. That treat is made even stronger by the fact that navigating the image is done multitouch style with a touchless system built from web cams. We’ve seen lots of projects come out of the NUI group with similar interfaces, but none that used the webcams like this. Usually, the webcam is detecting some kind of interaction between the person and an infra red light source. Maybe that is happening here and we just don’t see it.

Flexi Knobs

February 19, 2010 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

These boxes, called Flexi Knobs, work like a wireless Atari paddle and mouse rolled into one. Each has a rotary encoder that can also be clicked like a button. On the inside is a wireless optical mouse which controls an on-screen cursor which matches the color of the knob. In the video after the break you can see these are being used as midi controls. Each cursor can be locked onto a virtual knob, giving it a physical interface. Because there are several units being used on one machine this creates something of an abstract multi-touch system. This would make a nice interface for other applications with a plethora of settings, like Blender.

Continue reading “Flexi Knobs” →

Porta Touch: Portable Multitouch

February 9, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 4 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHpZ5tM7sN8]

We just found this great portable multitouch rig called the portatouch. Made by a user at the NUI group website named [portatouch], this system uses a stripped down LCD as the display with IR LEDs edge lighting a touch surface in front of it. A camera mounted below the LCD picks up the reflections of the LEDs and converts it to touch points. While the implementation isn’t anything new, the package is really great. If you want to learn how to set up the technical side of it all, head over to the NUI group website and you’ll find all you want. We would love to see a more detailed breakdown of his rig though. The portability and quick construction are fantastic and seem like they could be reproduced without a ton of custom work.

Unlocking Multitouch For Droid And Nexus One

January 25, 2010 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

We’re fans of pinch-zooming and that means multitouch. Although the interface is natively supported by both the hardware and operating systems of the Nexus One and Droid phones, it is locked out of the stock installation. You can make multitouch work on both handsets if you’re willing to do a little firmware alteration.

The coding has already been done for you, it’s a matter of loading a custom kernel. Both the Nexus One and the Droid have been rooted, and that’s what you’ll need to do to unlock multitouch with new firmware. In addition to gaining full access to the device OS, you’ll need to load up some different apps that support pinch zooming, etc. Luckily, these are readily available and you may like them better than the stock browser, maps, and photo applications.