For the tech-savvy or tech-curious: RKVS Raman's UbuntuStudio work-around on the HP TouchSmart PC!

Getting the most out of a HP TouchSmart PC...

I have a TouchSmart, and if I wasn't so busy at my job, I would love to spend my time digging into the core of the system.

Thanks, RKVS Raman, for your explanation about the way to identify the NextWindow touch screen as an input device in the HP TouchSmart PC using UbuntuStudio. This was something I was curious about.

Here is RKVS Raman's "how-to", from his RKVS Raman Blogs

"This gotcha explains how we made it to work.

1) Installed xserver-xorg-input-evdev
2) HP Touch Smart uses NextWindow TouchScreen. The tricky part was to find which input device is connected. An cat /proc/buc/input/devices pointed wrongly to event2.
3) After googling a lot, we found evtest. Downloaded evtest.c and compile it.
4) Ran evtest as root with various input devices like /dev/input/event[1...X]
5) One of the runs showed Input Device as NextWindow TouchScreen. That was the one. The device was /dev/input/event4

Input driver version is 1.0.0
Input device ID: bus 0x3 vendor 0x596 product 0x1 version 0x200
Input device name: "NextWindow TouchScreen"
Supported events:
Event type 0 (Reset)
Event code 0 (Reset)
Event code 1 (Key)
Event code 3 (Absolute)
Event type 1 (Key)
Event code 330 (Touch)
Event type 3 (Absolute)
Event code 0 (X)
Value 0
Min 0
Max 32687
Event code 1 (Y)
Value 0
Min 0
Max 32687

6) Made the necessary changes to our xorg.conf according to this page. Change the /dev/input/event1 to the device that we found as connected to touchscreen (/dev/input/event4) through our evtest runs.

7) Saved xorg.conf and rebooted. And Voila, touchscreen works.

Now that touchscreen works, let me load Sugar, it's gonna be fun."

Sugar is the core of the One Laptop Per Child (OLAP) Human Interface. It can be emulated on a PC, but doesn't have all of the features of the original.

Of interest to computer students and armchair technologists:

RKVS Raman teaches data structures (and artificial intelligence?), at least from what I gather from his blog posts.

I liked the link to a B-tree animation applet. If you are a computer student, remember not to confuse a B-tree with a binary tree!

There is more. RKVS Raman has an interesting post about Dijkstra's Algorithm and Human Psyche.

Dijkstra's algorithm

New multi-touch "Gravitoy" application from NUI; Multi-touch Space Invaders from Barcelona; "Open source" touch-less multi-touch SDK on CodePlex

NUI (Natural User Interface) recently unveiled Gravitoy, a multi-touch physics application that offers two modes of interaction. Below is a picture of children engaged in collaborative play on an interactive table running Gravitoy in the Sandbox mode. The children can draw objects that interact using principles of physics. (Photos are from NUI co-founder Harry van der Veen's blog)



Below are table-shots of the Sandbox mode:



See the triangle?

The second mode of Gravitoy is "Stacks". Two players play a game of stacking objects of various sizes. The difficulty level can be adjusted by changing gravity options.



This would make science lab engaging for students!

In addition, NUI developed a 3d model viewer application, which looks like it would be fun for budding architects and designers.

Visit the NUI website to learn more about the company and NUI's partners.

Take a look at Multi-touch Space Invaders from Multi-touch Barcelona. It looks like a fun game to play during a rainy recess:

Multitouch Space Invaders! from Multitouch Barcelona (NUI-Group members) on Vimeo.

If you are interested in learning more about developing multi-touch applications and systems, visit the NUI Group website for opensource resources, code, and "how-to" support forums.

Video clips and links related to the work of NUI-Group members, such as Christian Moore, Harry van der Veen, and Seth Sandler, can be found on a previous post:
More Multi-touch from Members of NUI Group!




Touchless Multi-touch...
I recently learned of another "open-source" touch-less "multi-touch" resource. The Touchless SDK was developed for a college project by a Columbia University student, Mike Wasserman.
You will need Visual Studio 2008, the code, and a webcam to get started. From what I can tell, the code will work with in the XNA development environment.

The Touchless SDK website has links to a video demonstration, demo code, FAQs, and more. The discussion list has a lot of good information.

Mike Wasserman is now working at Microsoft Labs.

Children, Teens, Families, and the Economic Crisis

For those of you who would like to know how to handle the stress regarding our economy as it relates to children, teens, and family, take a look at my recent post on the TechPsych blog:

Children, Teens, Families, and the Economic Crisis

(I am still looking for more resources for children and families, so feel free to add a link in the comments.)

Data and Information Visualization Resources for Economics, Finance, and the Current Crisis

I posted a variety of links to data and information visualization resources that might be helpful to those of you who are interested in exploring our current economic crisis:

Economic Sights and Sounds: Links to Data and Information Visualization resources for Economics, Finance, and the Current Crisis

I'm using the Economic Sights and Sounds blog as a repository of information and links for use in a collaborative interactive multimedia time-line of events surrounding the current situation.

Ideum's multi-touch, multi user table prototype

The above picture is from Jim Sapadaccini's post about Ideum's mutli-touch table prototype, using NUI (Natural User Interface) software, "Snowflake". Ideum is working on gesture-recognition software for use in future projects.

Ideum will be designing for museum installations, and will include user-testing as they work towards applications that will support collaboration among museum visitors as they interact around the exhibits.

For more information see the Ideum blog, and also Ideum's portfolio page.

Microsoft Surface and the Nintendo Wii?! Interesting mashup from Stimulant

Stimulant: Microsoft Surface + Nintendo Wii Mashup from Stimulant on Vimeo.


Stimulant, a company that has partnered with Microsoft to develop applications for the Surface multi-touch table:

"What do you get when you mash-up Microsoft Surface with a Wii Balance Board? Pressure-sensitive surface computing! Yes, the Surface is sitting directly on the Balance Board (it supports 600 pounds, we checked). Here, Josh demonstrates a simple application that lets users create bubbles of various sizes and roll them around the table using pressure on the edges of the Surface. You also get a sneak peek at the WPF/Silverlight physics engine we've been working on as well. Pressure sensitivity adds an extra dimension to the Surface experience and opens new doors on an already highly advanced platform."

I'd like to learn more about Stimulant's other Surface experiments!

Nintendo Wii