Water surface functions as touchscreen interface

Who would have thought that something as ordinary as the surface of some water being used as more than a poor substitute for a mirror? Just take a look at this Water Touch Screen video and you’ll know what we’re talking about. It relies on a webcam as well as a cleverly written piece of software to turn the water’s surface into an unorthodox way of playing out a touchscreen interface. It does so using some pixie dust and plenty of magic – we jest, the webcam will snap a photo of the surface of the water from the lower side, and only when the finger has invaded the water. Following that, a color tracking system on Max/MSP+Jitter finds coordinates where the finger appears while producing a cursor move and click in return. Any image distortion will be adjusted by affine transformation. Pretty neat, eh?

Permalink: Water surface functions as touchscreen interface from Ubergizmo | Hot: Evo 4G Review, iPad Review

This post is tagged: color, dust, finger, G Review, Gadgets, image distortion, interface, jest, jitter, LOOK, magic, Max, max msp, mirror, photo, piece, pixie, pixie dust, plenty, poor substitute, screen, side, snap, software, something, substitute, Surface, surface of the water, system, touch, touch screen, touchscreen, touchscreen interface, transformation, video, Water, water surface, way, webcam