7. And What About Open Source?

New technology, new stakes

Why has the iPhone been such a success? Why do the videos of Jeff Han using his giant screens, or those of Microsoft Surface in action, look so impressive? Is it because they’re touchscreens or because they’re multi-touch? No, those technologies have existed for many years. Is it because Apple and Perceptive Pixel have developed excellent software interfaces that let the user really take advantage of the power of the hardware? Now you’ve put your finger on it. And now you begin to see how much is at stake, and the challenges that developers and designers face in the new tactile world.

In their view, it’s time to forget mice, keyboards, drop-down menus and illegible icons. The future of an entire segment of the IT world will be tactile and that means that interfaces have to be adapted to this new mode of human interface with the computer. Apple and Microsoft have blazed a trail, but there’s a downside: high prices and an exclusive clientel. This means that there’s a risk that tactile interfaces will remain the province mainly of wealthy clients in a few big corporations.

Two Development Kits

To avoid that situation and to ensure that new interfaces can be developed and new uses for personal computers can be conceived, independent developers need to be able to experiment with the new hardware at a reasonable cost. The solution was to put together an equivalent of Microsoft Surface in a “do-it-yourself” kit form. And that’s how CUBIT and TouchKit came about. There’s a difference, however: these prototypes use the FTIR technology. The TouchKit, which sells for $1,600, includes:

- A screen
- IR transmitters
- An IR camera
- The necessary software (an API and software for screen calibration and optical touch recognition) All you need to do is add a standard video projector and connect everything up to a PC.

The blue circles are the user’s fingers, as seen by the system. The project has achieved a certain degree of success — as of now, 200 kits have been sold, and the community of developers numbers between 500 and 1000 members. That said, no complete solution that rivals Surface has so far, well, surfaced. A Giant Multi-Touch Screen For $65

If you still don’t see yourself paying $1,600 for the TouchKit, you can turn your own screen into a multi-touch surface for a mere $65. So what’s the title of this fairy tale? No, it’s true. All you need to do is recycle your Wiimote.

The remote control that comes with the Nintendo game console has an infrared camera and movement detection circuits for following four points. That planted an idea in the brain of Johnny Chung Lee, a student at Carnegie Mellon University, who’s working on touchscreens. Here’s his recipe: Take one freshly picked Wiimote, a video projector, two or three ballpoint pens, a PC with some life left in it and a handful of infrared LEDs. Then:

- Connect the video projector to the PC, turn it on and set it aside
- Carefully clean the ballpoint pens, discard the viscera.. uh, the cartridges, and reserve the bodies
- Insert one IR LED into each pen shell. Connect to a source of current, such as a battery that will fit into the pen body
- Set up the Wiimote across from the image projected by the video projector, so that it can “see” the entire image (a healthy Wiimote has an angle of vision of under 45°)
- Download and install the program written by Chung Lee that lets the PC recognize the information coming from the Wiimote as mouse movements.
- Switch on the pens, and admire your masterpiece! For a more visually rewarding explanation, you can take a look at the video below.

A Touchscreen Built Around a Wiimote