Control Geek

This week my friend Philippe Jean from les Ateliers Numériques in Quebec came in to set up and demonstrate his Large Scale Sensing Surface (LSSS), which we recently purchased at CityTech.  Here's a quick little video (sorry for the audio, this is the first video I shot with my D90):

This is the same system used to drive some of Holger Forterer's amazing projections for Cirque's Kà (my extensive writeup here, video showing the stage and projections here).

The LSSS system is based on thin, flexible panels with an embedded sensing grid, and are designed to sense whole body parts, not a single finger (there are tons of precise touch screens solutions out there). 

Each panel has a matrix of sensors, and connects to a Tile Controller box:

This Tile Controller box talks RS-485 to a Section Controller box, which then broadcasts its data via UDP and Ethernet.  Philippe has software that then filters and processes this data, and then offers up coordinate, radius, and orientation data via the TUIO Protocol. 

Philippe also can generate other types of shape data.

The system is, essentially a big antenna, so there are a bunch of issues with grounding and ground planes, and also the sensor tiles need to be supported in a very rigid way. 

It's a very cool system and it gives us a lot of opportunities for cool stuff!