Hi everybody, i have started building my table couple of weeks ago, LCD Led LR - anyways...i’ve read alot in this forum and out of here googling etc. everything is based on cameras , since webcams are available everywhere its a good idea...but the problem is the space...we need something that can be thinner, i got an idea...and done some researches and testing finding out that its possible, here how it goes, optical computer mice, they have a small ccd sensor thats used to sense ir and light reflection from surface...get an optical mouse and a remote control, shine the IR beam of the RC into the optical lense of the mouse, it would move...alright...since mice are so cheap and easy to find we could use like 20 or 30 mice that would be mounted like 2CM behind the LCD like if we r using LLR or something like it, and as for the software there is a russian guy who managed to make the CCD sensor of the optical mouse work as small crappy cam, im little confused and have like million things to do i’d like if some ppl of the community would help improve this altho im a dental and oral surgeon but im in love with computers and electronics since i was a kid and have written so many programs for many companies but being in the field of medicne would distort your mind cuz u would need much time,,, anyways hope to hear form you ppl...thnx

google for the mouse eye project and test it your self

Hi Hunix,

i came along this idea several month ago.

Of course it is possible to read out the camera sensor.. but the problem will be the optics perhabs.
And of course you will have to do a lots of mikrocontroller programming to read out all these sensors.

It’s still a good idea i think… but lots of work.

I have found this MouseHack, this could be a start point. You have to think about resolution and optics if you want to start such a project.

The thing is… it must be easy and cheap! There are more and more commercial MultiTouch solutions which are affordable.
No one invest time and money if he can have a better proffesional product for less money.

I saw an idea a little while ago with a sem-similiar system. He used a fiber optic bundle in front of the camera that was dispersed underneath the screen, he then wrote some fancy software that had a line go across the screen and it would interpret where each fiber optic was on the screen in relation with the other end on the camera sensor. This allowed for a rather thin table; about one or two inches.

Maybe the HP LD4200TM might be a good option. I’m waiting for a response from HP Sales in America to find out about getting one shipped to Japan as HP Japan aren’t selling them yet.
I think for the $1999 price tag for a 42” Multitouch LCD (promo display model) it’s better then buying a $1500 short through projector, acrylic, leds, sony PS3Eye etc etc. The only thing left would be to build the table around it. This takes some of the fun out I suppose.

Benoit Rousseau and Martijn Thé wrote an Arduino library to read from optical mouse sensors (ADNS series) and it work great.
Here’s a little thing I did some time ago.

But reading from a lot of sensors might be time consuming and I’m not sure easily doable.
There’s this guy, Stephen Hobley, who wrote a lib to read from the WiiMote IR camera.

I don’t know how many points the Pixart sensor can track, but that could be an easier solution.