Interactive tables for fun and, er, fun.
Posted by Nick Johnson | Filed under tech, coding, interactive-table, 18xx
Recently, I've been pondering, with some workmates, the practicality of putting together our own interactive table, similar to the Microsoft Surface or the reactable.
There are a number of variations on how to build one, but the one we're planning on trying seems to be the simplest: Build a custom table with a frosted glass or perspex top, and place a projector in the base, projecting onto the bottom of the frosted surface. Additionally, have a camera under the table, pointing at the surface, to detect touches and objects.
There are a number of variations on this theme. trackmate is a system of 2d barcodes and open source software that allows you to tag and track objects. Their example configurations involve a frosted plexiglass surface, with even illumination and a camera placed underneath. None of them directly support surfaces with images projected onto them, though.
This instructable demonstrates the construction of a multitouch table that supports both touch detection and a projector, through a technique called frustrated total internal reflection. It relies on a strip of infra-red LEDs along the edge of the panel, and touching the panel disrupts the internal reflection, allowing an infra-red camera under the ...