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Centre for HCI Design

City student builds DIY multi-touch tabletop PC to rival computing giants





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Meirion Williams - a Masters student at City University London - has built a fully-functioning, touch screen, tabletop computer, using components purchased from high-street stores. His budget was just £1,400 - around a tenth of the price of a similar commercial unit.

"The Microsoft Surface and the rumoured Apple iSlate are amongst today's most-coveted gadgets, but come with a hefty price tag," says Williams. "So I decided to prove that it's relatively easy and cost effective to build your own, using parts that are readily available from electronics and DIY shops."

Designed as part of Williams' MSc in Human Centred Systems at City's Centre for Human Computer Interaction Design, the resulting machine features a 32" multi-touch, cabinet-mounted screen, enabling several people to stand around it and interact together, using only fingertips and hand gestures.

At the heart of the device is a regular Mac Mini computer, running on Microsoft Windows 7. Its interface is projected onto a touch screen, made from a sandwich of acrylic sheets and tracing paper, using a standard data projector. Infra-red cameras then detect fingertips on the surface, with open source image processing software translating their position and movement into commands to the computer, enabling users to interact with it without the use of a keyboard or mouse.

"Multi-touch tabletops represent the cutting-edge in collaborative computing, allowing multiple users to work together with a more fluid and natural interaction. It would be great to see more people building them in their schools, universities or home workshops," adds Williams.

Following successful tests and user evaluations at City's Interaction Lab, which is supported by The Vodafone UK Foundation, the machine was exhibited at Techfest 2009-2010, Mumbai - Asia's largest science, technology and technical festival, which is sponsored by the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and attracts an audience of 60,000 people from academia and industry. For more information and pictures, visit Meirion's blog - http://mezatop.com