Backlighting the display

Time for a much-deserved update!  Been busy at work the past couple weeks and then went on vacation for the last half of last week.  Back to work now!

So, the replacement LCD arrived and everything works wonderfully again.  I have everything hooked up and have moved on to working on the backlight enclosure.  As I posted previously, I’m using the original LCD backlight but need to add reflective walls to the sides since the backlight now sits about two feet below the display.

Right now I have begun work using styrofoam insulation sheets.  They are white which means no painting and they’re very light and easy to work with.  They won’t add a ton of weight to the final product.  I have two walls built so far to test and see if things will work like I had thought.

Upon turning everything back on, I was very pleased to notice that this had made a huge improvement over not having any walls.  However, there was still a noticeable brightness difference in the area with the backlight and the areas where the walls could be seen.  It is very faint, but definitely noticeable.

I happened to have a medium-sized mirror nearby and placed it in front of the styrofoam walls to see how such a surface would look.  When the looking at the display, the area with the mirror had no noticeable difference in brightness from the actual backlighting panel.

This is great news.  My plan now is to buy a product called Gesso to seal the styrofoam so that I can paint it with some chrome spray paint.  This should produce about the same result as the mirror without the added weight or cost of purchasing actual mirrors to use in the wall panels.

I’ll post again once more progress has been made.  It should come a bit quicker this time!

Building the skeleton

It’s been a while since I’ve updated.  This is due to an unfortunate issue that has delayed my progress.  I was waiting to see if I could get it resolved and post pictures of the table with the display on.  However, it looks like it’s going to take a bit longer than I thought.

For some reason my LCD just stopped turning on for no reason.  No relay click when plugging it in, and nothing powering on at all.  I had everything mounted except for the power supply board before things stopped working.  So, I assumed in the mounting of the power supply I had done something that damaged the board.  I bought a new power supply which I received today and plugged in.  No luck.  Still nothing.

So, now that I know that the display not working was not caused by something I did I’m just going to have to put it back together and send it back in.  Guess that’s the chance you take by buying refurbished.

In any case, I thought I’d post some pictures of my progress.  Enjoy, and I’ll report back soon!

Notching one of the aluminum pieces.  Couldn’t get the snips in at the angle I needed so out comes the trusty Dremel!

Screwing the LCD frame into the aluminum to keep it from flexing when pressure is applied.

An earlier shot of the boards mounted on the back of the table (before the TV died)

Currently you can see through the sides of the table.  I’ll be adding white reflective walls surrounding the backlight to fix this issue.

Closeup of the display.  LCD frame screwed into aluminum frame attached to the top of the table.  Tempered glass above for a nice rigid surface to touch without worrying about someone messing up the LCD.  The glass I’m using is temporary pulled from one of my desks.  It has a blue tint so I’m going to have to buy a new sheet for the final product.

The finalized rear of the table with the LCD circuit boards attached.

Voila … the final product.  This is just the basic skeleton to which the exterior paneling will be attached.

Seagate D.A.V.E.: perfect MT compliment?

One of the biggest things that is thought about when designing multi-touch is getting rid of the keyboard and mouse.  I think the second biggest thing should be getting external data onto the table easily without using cables or a secondary computer for uploading.

Microsoft’s Surface has done some of this in a very neat way by interfacing with your Bluetooth enabled camera or cell phone and displaying the contents on the table.  However, what if you want to add other files beside pictures on your camera?  Time to pop open the CD tray or plug in a jump drive.

I was reading a bit about some new technology from Seagate coming out later this year that appears to be the perfect compliment to multi-touch.  D.A.V.E. is a small form factor hard drive that includes Bluetooth and WiFi built in.

I can’t wait to get my hands on this when it’s released.  I can imagine it would be pretty simple to check for a large blob from the hard drive (or a fiducial marker) and then interface with the Bluetooth to grab and transfer files to and from the drive.  Plop the hard drive on the table and interact with it’s contents wirelessly without having to plug anything in!

If I’m able to get ahold of one of these I’ll work on developing some kind of interface (Objective-C/Cocoa based) that I’ll make public open-source via another part of this site that will hopefully be launched in the next few months at http://developme.ntal.ws/

Taking apart the LCD … pics

Some pictures of my progress the other night.  Completely separated the LCD TFT from the backlight, removed the power and input source boards, and reconnected everything.  My Mac Mini is connected via HDMI giving me full 1920×1080 resolution.  Things look really nice.

Working on the skeleton of the case now.  I hope to post progress and/or pictures tomorrow.