MEZATOP - Chronicles of a multi-touch tabletop

The Mezatop at City University Interaction Lab open day

On Wednesday 21st April 2010, City University London held an open day for the Department of Human Computer Interaction. A array of guest speakers give talks on topics from UX consultancy through to usability testing with disabled users. In the Interaction Lab a variety of technologies were on display including eye-tracking for website usability evaluation, head-tracking using Wii controllers, and mobile usability testing.

Meirion Williams, designer of the Mezatop, was on hand to demonstrate the latest in interactive multi-touch computing. Visitors experienced the Microsoft Surface, and Williams’ own design Mezatop. They enjoyed exploring the possibilities that multi-touch interaction offers to games, entertainment and creativity applications. For the more technical minded there was the chance to get to grips with the nitty-gritty details and take look inside the Mezatop and behind the scenes at the software that powers this device.

City Interaction Lab and HCID Open day 2010

     
Click here to download:
The_Mezatop_at_City_University.zip (209 KB)

Mezatop poster

(download)

Techfest 2010 day 2

Photos from day 2 of Techfest 2010 at IIT Bombay.

                             
Click here to download:
Techfest_2010_day_2.zip (3344 KB)

Techfest 2010 day 1

Thanks to all who came along to experience the Mezatop on the first day of Techfest. We had a fantastic response and enjoyed discussions with many students, lecturers and professionals.

About The Mezatop

The Mezatop is an interactive touch-screen tabletop computer built by Meirion Williams at City University London.

It features an 82cm cabinet-mounted screen, enabling several people to stand around it and interact together, using 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. An infra-red camera detects 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.

The Mezatop allows you to fully utilise the benefits of multi-touch computing at a fraction of the cost of a commercial tabletop.

Features

  • Multi-user, multi-touch finger tracking
  • Recognises up to 511 touch-points simultaneously
  • Free-standing self-contained unit
  • 82cm flat screen
  • Uses infra-red camera with laser illumination for finger tracking
  • Runs Microsoft Windows 7 and open source vision software
  • Simple design and construction
  • Uses of the shelf available parts

Benefits

  • Costs a fraction of a commercial multi-touch surface
  • Runs a wide variety of multi-touch applications
  • Compatible with multi-touch features of Windows 7
  • Allows for experimentation with multi-touch software and hardware

Packing up the tabletop

Today the tabletop gets striped down and flat-packed up, Ikea bookshelf style, ready for shipping to India for Techfest 2010.