DIY Multi-touch Tabletop Display
Why wait to play with someone else's Microsoft Surface multi-touch tabletop display, when you can build one yourself! Apparently a big hit at this last weekend's Maker Faire, was an open-source design for tinkerers to inexpensively build their own multi-touch tabletop display with off-the-shelf components. The design comes from Eyebeam, a self-described, "art and technology center that provides a fertile context and state-of-the-art tools for digital research and experimentation."
"...engineers at Eyebeam... have created a scaled-down open-source version of Surface, called Cubit. By sharing the Cubit's hardware schematics and software source code, the engineers are significantly reducing the cost of owning a multitouch table. But they're also fostering innovation by giving engineers an open platform on which to develop novel multitouch applications--something that they've previously lacked."
Based on the specific components you choose to use, the total cost for building a device based on this design is estimated to cost between $500 and $1,000. That's a far cry from the estimated $10,000 of the Microsoft Surface. A brief entry on Eyebeam's site points to another page that is supposed to provide more information about the device. Unfortunately, at the time of this news post, the page is not loading--probably from too much traffic due its sudden popularity.
