I have been looking for an application on the Internet that allows to record TUIO streams. However, I did not find a sufficient solution for this problem. Thus, I decided to write my own application called ThrongOSCDeck that can accomplish this task. It builds upon my Throng application that can be used to multiplex TUIO bundles from different TUIO providers.
Recently, I made my first steps in Adobe Air 2. As Air 2 is still in Beta version (currently in Beta 2, which was released on February 2, 2010) there still could be some problems when working with it.
SurfaceToTuio is available as source code only (there is no executable). However, you can just upload the SurfaceToTuio folder to your Surface, doubleclick the Visual Studio project and compile it in the Surface’s Visual Studio right away.
I recently had opportunity to lay my fingers onto a Stantum SMK-15.4 Multi-Touch Development Kit. The SMK-15.4 is a TFT panel with a resolution of 1280*800 pixels, which is equipped with a foil that contains a net of transparent capacitors, which can track multiple touches. Thus, the SMK-15.4’s touch principle is similar to the iPhone’s.
The Stantum SMK 15.4 Multi-Touch Device
I have used it to develop the multi-touch parts of the TUIO-driven Flash multi-touch application Pf Design Media Installation. The SMK-15.4 comes with drivers for Windows and for the Macintosh. Additionally, for Windows there is a small application available that tranlates Stantum multi-touch events into TUIO events that can be (more or less easily) processed by a Flash Actionscript application.
The image quality of the device is not too good. The foil takes away lots of screen brightness and the colors tend to be fairly flat. The SMK-15.4 produces some error blobs quite next to the center of the screen, which bothers a bit. The whole appearence and manufacturing of the device is fairly prototypeish. I would not trust it to be used in an everyday application because the device and the touch foil coating seems to be rather fragile. However, it has been reported by a Stantum engineer that the panel can be equipped with a thin sheet of acrylic glass, which does not prevent touches from being realized. I only tested this with a thin sheet of paper and the tracking worked through the paper smoothly.
The apperance and the performance of the SMK-15.4 can not overcome the impression that the device is still a prototype that I would not use in a productive environment. However, the device has been a hell of a lot helpful to develop, test and debug my multi-touch application and especially tasks that were related to multi-finger input like pinching and rotating.
Thus, multi-touch software developers will have good use of the SMK-15.4. Everyone else should think twice before buying one.
A picture of my setup with the Stantum SMK-15.4 and my MacBook Pro running under Windows Vista: Stantum SMK 15.4 Connected to MacBook Pro under Windows Vista
