Do It Yourself Multi-touch Development

At Autodesk University we had the Perceptive Pixel Multi-touch Wall in the exhibit hall. Though I have not blogged about multi-touch in a while, this sparked renewed interest in this topic. A Mr. Richard Feder of Fort Lee, New Jersey wrote in:

I am working on an interactive application using multi touch screen technology. I am interested to know what kind of software packages or software development kits are available for the touch screen technology interface? I want to find an open source piece of software in this area to test some ideas out on. I am interested in smaller multi touch screens if you are aware of any.

Autodesk Labs Human Computer Interface Software Developer, Eddy Kuo, and Geospatial Senior Systems Developer, Hans Kellner, had immediate answers:

Here are sources for multi-touch and more
http://www.openframeworks.cc/
http://www.nuigroup.com/touchlib/

Here are cheaper and smaller size multi-touch displays:
http://touchkit.nortd.com/index.html
http://ssandler.wordpress.com/MTmini/

For a broad overview of this topic, you may wish to look at Dan Saffer's Book Designing Gestural Interfaces:

Designing Gestural Interfaces

Thinking about using just our fingers to tell a computer what to do is alive in the lab.