Archive for April 2011 - Purple Squirrels

Here is a small update on the current state of my coffee table. Its been a nearly a year now since I first started and I’m still slowly working on it. Recently I decided to add some touch sensitive hardware buttons at the edge of the screen. I researched some different ways of doing this and I decided to use Phidgets since these seem to be the easiest to use with Flash or any other languages and weren’t as low level as something like Arduino. So I bought a Phidgets board and 4 touch sensors and installed two on each side of the screen to be used as hardware buttons. I have adjusted my multitouch painting application so that these buttons hide/show tools, layers and other panels. Here are some photos of the installation in the table top:

Routing out the recesses in the table top to sit the sensors in:

Mounting the Phidgets controller:

Two of the Phidgets touch sensors sitting in place. They will be covered by 3mm of perspex which will eventually be the top layer of the table:

Below are some interesting videos regarding experience and interaction design. You can find the remaining 3 parts to the second video at Interaction-Design.org