Wanted to forward a link to Microsofts LaserTouch concept. Unfortunatly they will not be bringing this product to market. It seems like it uses similar tech for their touch wall. Perhaps someone can take this and turn it an open source project so that people can start working with the multitouch technology without any major modifications to their existing hardware.

I know that a few people on these forums have been experimenting with lasers for mutitouch purposes it seems they are on the right path.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=news_single.html?id=8779

Hope the above link helps.

Ken

Hey Ken,

The link above seems to cause an error: maybe you could copy/paste some of the info?

You might be interested in:
http://nuigroup.com/forums/viewthread/1866/

And how to do it yourself:
http://nuigroup.com/forums/viewthread/2029/

Cool thanks for the links!

Looks like kurzweilai site is having some database problems. It seems to happen now and again on their site. Should be back up later on.

No worries I will paste alterative links here. and pasted some of the contents of the article below. These are some other articles I have found.

C/Net Article:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9950674-7.html

InfoWorld Article:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/05/23/Microsoft-Surface-developer-turns-attention-to-lasertouch_1.html

Engadget Article:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/23/microsofts-lasertouch-prototype-brings-hand-control-to-any-disp/

Here is the Text taken from the KurzweilAI.net Article

“A Low-Cost Multitouch Screen

Technology Review, May 29, 2008

Microsoft introduced a new multitouch platform, called LaserTouch, which includes hardware that’s cheap enough to retrofit any display into a touch screen.

LaserTouch is a system built on the cheap: the hardware only costs a couple hundred dollars, excluding the display--which can be a plasma television or overhead projector, for instance--and the computer that runs the software. Unlike Surface, which uses a camera within the table to detect touch and a rear-projection system to create the images, LaserTouch uses a camera that’s mounted on top of the display. Two infrared lasers, with beams spread wide, are affixed at the corners, essentially creating sheets of invisible light. When a person’s finger touches the screen, it breaks the plane of light--an action that’s detected by the camera above.”

I’m curently trying to build this over a 42” plasma display.Gonna report my progress in a few days i hope.

Excellent!

I have a 47 inch Phillips display. Was trying to get some sort of solution working with a wii remote. Using Johnny Lee’s software but no luck. Hoping that there could be a solution nuigroup forums.

Looking forward to seeing your project.

Thanks,
Ken

Damn you Vlado, you beat me to it. Are you going to put the camera to the side or above it at an angle/out of the way? Are you going to use 1 or 2 lasers?

You can’t put the camera to the side , it couldn’t track x positions.It’s gonna be to the side upwards , and i have quite an ingenious thought about how to hold it above the plasma.
The major problem is the lens that’d make the laser light in a solid plain above the plasma , but i’ve seen that using the midle part of a wine glass works the same as the mirror AlexP used.

Will report progress.

to the side upwards???? The way that they did in the pictures/video he had it above the screen at an angle. The only issue I see with a plasma screen is that you couldn’t get the laser plane close enough to the screen. I would use the lenses from the craftsman laser level if I was you, the same way that AlexP did.

I don’t own a laser leveler and don’t know where to get it.And the camera position would be similar to the video you mention.Will see what i can come up with.

There should be laser levels available at any hardware store or on the internet, it seems that you live in a country far away from the US or the UK? I don’t quite understand why the camera position has to be what it is, why couldn’t you just put it at any angle where it could see most of the screen and then just keep looking for a good angle. I’m assuming that the laser technology works best with rear projection like AlexP is using but evidently Microsoft decided that they would do it differently.

The ideea is that the camera has to see both of your hands , so it has to be on the upperside of the screen.And i’ve been searching for laser levelers in online shops here in Romania and it’s about 200$ =)) , i could add a bit of extra cash and buy a projector for that amout of money.
Gonna buy a laser pointer tomorrow and start experimenting with diferent setups , if i can make it work with a laser pointer i’l make it work with an ir laser.

That sucks man, were the laser levels that you were looking at mounted on a tripod or something? Good luck with a laser pointer tomorrow.

Do you think that touchlib will work right out of the box with this system?

No , touchlib would have to be modified.Think about it , the camera would see that something is blocking the laser plain , we need to extrapolate the data inside that field to form a blob.
It shouldn’t be to hard to make in OpenCV and seeing how touchlib is based on OpenCV it shouldn’t be to hard to modify.
Still trying to get the parts i need to make this work , might be a while.

That is what I was thinking Vlado, i just don’t know to code anything

Ok i’m abandoning this project beacause of lack of materials.If somebody could continue this work i’d recomend using the diode out of a normal CD-ROM not a RW drive , a ROM.
It’s about 3.1-5mw , more than enough for something like this , even tough i sugest trying it with as low a voltage as posible at first , then getting it hot and heavy.