Open Source Interface

What do I need?

2008-11-02T00:15:37-05:00

Hello all

I am wanting to get into making my own MT apps, and i have messed around some before in python, so i figured i would use python to program with, especially since there were many people who say its a pretty easy language to start programing with. Anyways, I found xelaponds post about getting into developing MT apps, and one of the needed packages was TouchPy. I was wondering where and how i could get TouchPy. Im not quite sure what files i need, or even how to get them into python. i am really new to this, so any help would be awesome!

Thanks so much guys!

libavg for Windows

2008-11-19T16:45:35-05:00

Hey All,

I just wanted to let you know that libavg has finally been ported to Windows!

For those that don’t know what libavg is, it is a hardware accelerated multimedia framework that allows you to create graphical programs in python and xml. The library has built-in blob tracking support for use with your existing setup.

This code is still rather new, so if there are issues, please provide feedback. Check out instructions on getting setup on the wiki:

https://www.libavg.de/wiki/index.php/Libavg_on_Windows

Status of Python

2008-08-08T10:48:19-05:00

Greetings everyone!

I’m writing this post because, well, I’m confused, I need direction, and I think I might not be alone in either. Like many others, I began writing my own custom apps in Actionscript 3/Flash, and while it makes it quick and easy to develop them, it also runs slow as heck on anything other than a beast of a computer, and it doesn’t really allow for the sorts of graphical manipulations that I know many of us would like to see, since there’s no direct access to hardware rendering (at least, not in Flash 9). Then I was tipped onto Python. Seems fairly easy to pick up (although it might take a lifetime to master), there are great libraries out there already for working with graphics, and there are a few folks already working on things Python and multitouch related. However, it seems...disorganized, to say the least.

I’m a total newbie to Python, I’ll admit it, but when I came to learn how to do multitouch, I was able to jump right into the AS3 side of things because there were tutorials, examples, and tons of code already floating around. There were also guides, and the AS3 example code was integrated right into the Touchlib code you download from the SVN. Since trying to jump into the Python side of things, though, I’ve found no less than 4 different libraries, all promising to deliver basically the same thing, barely any example working applications, and not even a dedicated sub-forum, let alone guides or tutorials. If we want to get serious about Python around NUIGroup, I suggest we start changing this, for the good of all those folks out there, like me, who are trying to get a grip on this, and simply finding themselves floundering around without a clue.

So, here’s what I’m asking, oh ye Lords of Multitouch Python (and you know who you are): what is the status of Python and multitouch? What libraries are out there? What samples? Any tutorials? Can we settle on a way to get the ball rolling, an “official” NUIGroup way of doing Python multitouch, and start progressing from there? If not, what differences need to be solved to get to that point?

I don’t mean in any way to imply that the progress of the Python side of things is progressing too slowly, I just feel completely in the dark about the whole thing. I’ve poured over the python-lux transcript till my eyes bled, but it all boils down to one question: if I want to make the transition from AS3 to Python, where should I start?

On a side note, I’d like to begin the discussion by bringing up the subject of object event handling. In AS3, the concept is that you attach event listeners to each object you place on the table, then write generic event handlers. So, when someone touches Photo #451, it fires an event to the generic event handler for the photo objects, and some action takes place. In most of the Python scripts I’ve seen (and correct me if I’m wrong, here), the events system seems (at best) to be set around a global blob level (i.e. an event fires every time the blob state of the table changes, and then you have to do collision detection or something to figure out if you touched anything...)—it seems like it would be best (if it were possible) to develop a system as close the AS3 way of doing things as possible, if for no other reason than to ease the transition of folks like myself, since I have a feeling that’s where a lot of Python converts will be coming from.

Well, sorry for the wall of text, but I think this is an important issue, and I was hoping this might spur some discussion.

PyMT

2008-09-12T14:17:23-05:00

Hey fellow python lovers,

I have been working on some applications for some research studies I am running and thougth I’d share some code. I was having trouble with the OSC lib in touchpy a while back (although I think the newer version work great) so I used
simpleOSC to get a thread reading TUIO messages. I used some of the code form touchpy as well and have written some classes for use with pyglet. This should run on Windows/OSX/linux. I have tested it mainly on Ubuntu and more breifly on windows XP and OSX.

The idea here is to let pyglet get multi touch events just like it gets all its other events. I have written a custom event loop for use with pyglet and a TouchWindow class that receives dispatched multitouch events just like it receives other events. So you can attach your event handler for multi touch just like you attach mouse/window event handlers (also allows multiple event handelers and dynamically attaching/detaching event handlers). Also the mouse events will trigger touch events with touchID “mouse”...its not as full featured as a TUIO simulator yet, but it makes testing a little easier.

Check out the example apps, most of them are < 100 lines of code, so they should give you a quickidea of how to use the classes.

touchtracer.py
just draws an image and a line to trace each touch

glPaint.py
very simple drawing app with a oversimnplified colorpicker (notice that you can change color while drawing)

untabgle.py
a simple game that draws a circular graph and places the vertices at random locations. goal of the game is to untangle the graph (similar to http://www.planarity.net)

3dmt.py
draws an obj model exported form blender and lets you rotate it around, the more fingers you use the faster it rotates

Edit: Here are some quick snapshots of untangle.py and 3dmt.py:

Any feedback, testing or suggestion welcome

3D mesh show to be out of light in PyMt

2008-10-28T08:11:36-05:00

Last night i was try to generate some mesh out of the blender..

yet the demo on PyMT having very bright but in my mesh, every thing seam to out of light. Details does not shows up.

The thing is that when i try to render using blender, everything was perfect, but when export to OBJ and use it with PyMt, it seam does not export the light.

I also can’t find any document on this.

Hope any one tried to help me out on this problem

Getting started Developing Multi-Touch Apps in Python

2008-08-25T10:47:32-05:00

I have started a tutorial series on by Blog, showing people how to write Multi-Touch Apps in Python. The first installment has been posted. Sorry if its a little short or lacking, I am going to post a second part later this week doing some more exciting stuff.

As usual, All feedback and questions are appreciated. Here is the link:
http://xelapondsstuff.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/getting-started-with-multi-touch-development-in-python/#more-153

Multi-Touch and Python

2008-06-10T18:48:31-05:00

I’ve set up a Google Code project for my Python / TUIO 2D Cursor messages layer of classes. This should get python people started in designing event chains around finger touches in Python. (for fudicials check out pytuio)

http://code.google.com/p/2dcur/

So fair I’ve made several things, a photo program, a drawing program, and a sort of a theremin program with these, and a simple DI setup. Those things are rather buggy, but will include them soon.

It essentially does the following things:

1. Receives TUIO messages, filtering out duplicates - (touchList)
2. Calculates stats on finger down, finger update, and finger remove (touchStats)
3. Calculates differences on points since the last update (touchStats)
4. Maintains a state itself as a list of current fingers on the screen (touchList)
5. Hooks for callbacks into your app (touchStats)
6. Some basic routines for converting the percentages to window cooridinates (orienter)

Will be working on making this faster, and adding a generic object-binding method, which is a common theme to the aforementioned basic apps.

Developers, hobby projects, questions, suggestions, flames, etc greatly appreciated.

http://code.google.com/p/2dcur/

Thank you!

Touchpy

2008-08-30T06:31:37-05:00

I’ve just updated touchpy, I added fallback in case pyliblo isn’t installed ( I used pure python OSC implementation so nothing else isn’t needed)
other than that I fixed bug responsible for assertion warning messages.
Everything is backward compatible, and the code is as always on the google code page:

http://code.google.com/p/touchpy/source/browse/#svn/trunk

As a side note, you will need now OSC.py if you don’t have pyliblo installed (it’s on the GC page of touchpy)
This is something I did to make developing on windows possible, I will try to compile pyliblo on windows some day in the future, but for now this should be more than enough to use touchpy on that platform.

Be tuned for some more examples and code

Python anyone?

2008-03-31T16:55:43-05:00

Anyone else in love with python?

Anyways, I have started working on a gui/framework for multi touch applications written in python. I am currently using pyglet a toolkit for pyopengl. Its really easy and super fast to do hardware accelerated drawing.

Currently I only have a widget hierarchy and basic stuff written and I dont have the MY event system integrated yet (shouldn’t be too hard since touchlib can provide the events over network). But if others are interested I will share my code.

It’s not that i dont like actionscript or flash, but you have a lot more drawing options with openGL and python is a lot faster to write than C/C++. (Although I might port the core of the project to C or C++ once its more advanced and then provide a wrapper for python for some extra speed).

Also python has tons of libraries for other programming tasks such as system programming and networking(dont know how much actionscript/flash lest you do in that regard)

python 2.5, leopard, and graphics

2008-09-02T18:18:40-05:00

Basic python question here: do I need something like clutter or cgkit to make simple graphics? For example, I’d like to draw a circle wherever there is a touch. I’d like to keep it as simple as possible for now so I know why I’m doing what I’m doing.

How do I check what’s installed on my system? I found out today that there are at least 2 versions of python that mac users should be aware of, that from python.org and whatever comes with the developer tools. Which should I use, and how do I know what I’m using?