The clear coat helped a little. Nothing spetcaular. I noticed that my calloused fingertips made a nice bright blob a little easier.
Bottom line, the stuff couldn’t hurt. It would be interesting to see how well it performs with a silicone sheet or with Rosco.

This might be helpful to visualize the difference. Thanks to Christopher for the video.

Ok parker , when you have something that can work with virtual dj , ableton PM me with a picture of how you’d like the UI to look and i’l design something.
I love making stuff in photoshop and i’m quite good at it , curently i’m focusing on interface design so it should be right up my alley.

Thanks for the video link. There are a few others there that are also of interest.

@Vlado - interface design is also my profession, but your ideas will be appreciated.

beta tester +1

My table is also going to be built for audio production and DJing, once I can finally figure out what method to build my table…

My sheet of beveled and polished acrylic is ready to pick up! $70. Fair enough I say. That polishing stuff is time consuming, and besides, the plastics shop can make it perfect looking.
The LEDs shipped tuesday so I should have them by the weekend, which means I can construct the table then. I probably won’t have the projector until Monday though. Maybe Saturday…

I have sheets of good quality 18” x 24” drafting velum for a projection surface to start with. BUT....

I really want to get a piece of Rosco Grey. Who would be best to order it from?
Remember I’m in Hawaii… and shipping anything here $uck$. There are a few distributors on Oahu but they’ll just mark it up even more.
I want a mainland distributor that sells small quanities. Any suggestions?

I got everything in the mail today and I’ve been busy! The projector I picked up on eBay for $155 works great!

A little woodwork this morning yeilded a nice table by lunch time. This afternoon I’ve been soldering up the LED rails and installing them on the acrylic. I sealed them with aluminized silicone. Nice stuff. Blends with the aluminum nicely. A little blue masking tape on the acrylic does the trick to keep everything neat while you smooth out the bead. Just peel up the tape soon after and you get nice clean sealed edge.

UPDATE
It’s 8:24 pm. I just got done with the first test of the table. As you can see in the pic, I have more IR light than I really need. In fact, it spills over a bit too much. I may have to do something about that.
As far as blobs go, I got plenty! No problem!
Right now my setup is just .250” acrylic with drafting vellum .060” beneath it. Yes there is about a 1/16” air gap and I still have massive blobs, even with a 1/300 second shutter speed. Nothing but acrylic on top.

My first challenge will be in getting the image clean and proportional. I have a lot of “keystoning” and no way to deal with it other than physical placement of the projector and mirror. The bottom of the image area is smaller than the top. I’ll work it out. I should have bought a projector with a keystone adjustment! Oh well, I got a great deal on this one and it has plenty of lamp life left. Oh yeah, I need a piece of optical mirror as well. Because of the steep angle of reflection, I get a prism like effect on images with a conventional mirror.

I ran the TouchLib calibration, but it’s buggy on my laptop. When I run the smoke demo, my touch points are not aligned with my fingertips. I noticed that I no longer get the dialogue box that allows me to adjust the capture size etc. What’s up with that?? I need to download the latest calibration files and run the MT from my dual core machine.

I’ve been working on the table this morning. I keep fighting ambient IR from outdoors. It’s a small room with two windows and one faces east. Even though the room has the blinds drawn, every time the sun goes behind clouds you can see the background IR disappear! ARRRGGH!! I’ll set the calibration, then watch it all go to hell as soon as the ambient IR gets into the room.

I need a room without IR light. So, I guess I’ll have to cover the windows with cardboard or something. ( :

Otherwise, the table itself works fine. Tilting the tabletop helped. Now the image is nice and proportional without any keystoning, the IR cam is mounted on top of teh projector and it picks up finger touches just fine.

I need a breakfast break!

I covered the windows and managed to get a good test setup going. I uploaded a video of the smoke test.
I still need to mount the mirror and camera in a more permanent manner, but I’m pleased with the initial results!

I worked on the calibration and tried out the mouse driver last night.

Tinkerman - 08 June 2008 01:46 AM

I’ve been working on the table this morning. I keep fighting ambient IR from outdoors. It’s a small room with two windows and one faces east. Even though the room has the blinds drawn, every time the sun goes behind clouds you can see the background IR disappear! ARRRGGH!! I’ll set the calibration, then watch it all go to hell as soon as the ambient IR gets into the room.

I need a room without IR light. So, I guess I’ll have to cover the windows with cardboard or something. ( :

Otherwise, the table itself works fine. Tilting the tabletop helped. Now the image is nice and proportional without any keystoning, the IR cam is mounted on top of teh projector and it picks up finger touches just fine.

I need a breakfast break!

I’m getting my last piece in my rear DI setup this week, which is the IR emitters themselves. This is the part I’m most worried about. My wish is to be able to use this in my living room, and I don’t really want to be covering up my windows with cardboards or anything:p Is there anyone of the experienced MT guys that could give hints on how to deal with this problem?

Well as long as you don’t point a lamp or something at the table during the day you shouldn’t have any problems.

I’m looking into getting some IR blocking window film without any tint. Put it on top of the acrylic to block daytime IR light.
Eventually, I need to make an enclosure for the whole underside of the table. That will take care of ambiet IR light getting in the box and thus into the camera.

I placed a sheet of IR reducing window tint over my screen today. I just taped it in place. It filters out about 60% of the ambient IR in a daylit room. That’s good news because now I can work on the table in the daylight hours without having to cover the windows! In the tropics, a room with no ventilation and a projector running = hot!
It did not seem to degrade blobs in anyway, stil about the same sensativity.

An added bonus of the window film is the protection it offers to the drafting vellum. It’s not that dark and in fact, it helps to view the screen in a daylit room.

The stuff is available at most auto parts stores. Here’s a PDF from the website. I used the stuf in the middle rated “better”.

http://www.auto-expressions.net/Tintfilm.pdf

I suppose that “best” would filter out more IR. I’d also like to get some with less tint.