With all the attention at the moment on Multi Touch displays and interactive surfaces, I have decided to have a go at building my own. I’m hoping to be able to keep build costs down as I have a number of the neccessary components aleady.

Stuff I have:

• Projector (Toshiba DLP)
• Front Surfaced Mirror (salvaged from rear projection TV)
• Spare PC – I seem to have a few of these
• Variety of display surfaces to experiment with including plastic tablecloth material, translucent papers, translucent acrylic
• Webcams (a few to choose from)
• IR illuminator (in case I decide to take the simpler direct illumination approach)

Shopping List

• MDF (Hopefully if I plan it all carefully I can make a qute stylish cabinet that will be at home in my lounge)
• 10mm Acrylic (for refractive layer)
• 2mm acrylic (for top protective layer)
• Silicon
• IR LEDs (individual or strips)

First stage will be to build a cabinet and position projector and miror. A quick mock up showed the the projector should be perfect if I mount it near the top of the cabinet, facing down at an angle, and the reflect the image back to the top. I’ll need to do more precise measurements but I’m looking at a screen at least 24″x16″ up to 30″x20″

I’ll mock up the cabinet and use some scrap acrylic I have to test the display.

I don’t have alot of time to devote to this, so updates and progress will probably be slow, but I’ll make sure photos and video of the project are included here.

Stay tuned.