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.