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.

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