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A little more information - including OSS and DIY

Comment comment by scottb on 16 July 2007

For those whose interest is piqued by the video, the software shown is being developed as part of Microsoft's Surface project.

There's also an open-source project working on multi-touch extensions to X-Windows.

Also, the hardware they're using isn't outrageously difficult to build, for someone reasonably competent with their hands. There are are number of DIY projects that give instructions of varying completeness. The basic idea is that infrared LEDs around the edge of an acrylic plate naturally stay within the plate, but when you touch the surface of the plate, some of the IR light is reflected by your fingers through the other side of the plate. An IR camera is positioned behind the plate and it tracks the IR bright spots. The technique is called "Frustrated Total Internal Reflection", or FTIR.

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