I’ll be developing a multitouch application in WPF 4.0 running on Windows 7 and using Windows 7 native multitouch (supported in WPF 4.0) running in portrait mode. Dual finger touch should be enough. I have all the tools handy except for one: a multitouch input device aka multitouch monitor. So I am looking around for it and have found these options so far:
Bamboo Fun tablet
Last year I’ve bought a Bamboo Fun pen & touch tablet from Wacom. It supports both stylus and two finger touch input. I’ve assumed it will work natively with Windows 7. But it doesn’t. The core problem is that Bamboo has a relative touch positioning while Windows 7 requires absolute positioning – in other words Bamboo doesn’t know where your fingers are until you touch its surface. Furthermore Wacom decided to provide support through a generic driver to other OS beside Windows 7 and thus no Windows 7 native support is provided at this point in time. Disappointing.
Multitouch monitor
The most logical choice would be a multitouch enabled monitor. Heck, Windows 7 has been around for a while now (including beta and RC period) and there should be plenty of such monitors. At least that’s why I thought. Wrong again. There are some choices though. All of these supports Windows 7 native multitouch.
Acer T230H
A 23” 1920x1080 widescreen monitor from Acer. It supports dual touch through a some sort of simple mechanism using cameras. Has problems when you cross fingers or something like that. Not a huge problem in my case. But it has no pivot feature. I guess I’ll just put in horizontal portrait position on my desk or somewhere near. Despite these shortcomings this is my first choice at this point. The price tag is around 300€.
Dell SX2210T
A 21.5” 1920x1080 widescreen monitor from Dell. Smaller, slightly more expensive, dual-touch and no pivot as well.
Compaq L2105tm
The most hidden of the three. Similar to Dell’s one: 21.5” 1920x1080, no pivot. Couldn’t find it in EU so I am not sure about the price but in US is probably cheaper compared to Dell’s.
3M Multitouch developer kit
This one is interesting. A 19” 1440x900 monitor with support for up to 10 finger multi touch input. Looks like a perfect choice if it wasn’t for its price which is listed as $1.499 in US. I assume this is translated to >1.499€ for the EU. Ouch. Yet, this is the only multi-touch display that supports more than two fingers input.
Tablet PC
As an alternative to a proper monitor I might consider a tabled PC such as Dell Latitude XT2 or Acer AS5738PG-6306. First one is expensive and not exactly a development-grade fast machine, yet is a good quality product. The later is much cheaper and perhaps faster but has one fatal flaw in my case: the screen doesn’t rotate to “tablet” position and as such it won’t work in portrait mode. Furthermore touching the screen looks kind of problematic since you can easily flip it (imagine touching a standard laptop). Both laptops feature an integrated graphic card which isn’t good either.
A tablet PC is not the best option for my project anyway so I didn’t investigate much in this direction. The same goes for All-in-one multitouch PCs.
DIY alternative
Heh, I might even built a table like MS Surface by myself. Impossible? Not at all nor it is expensive. Actually it is very cheap. On the negative side it is quite time consuming, even more if you aren’t used to build such things.
Software simulation with multiple mice(MultitouchVista project)
There is way to simulate multitouch with multiple mice on normal monitor as well. Unfortunately it is not a feature of the OS but rather through a project hosted at CodePlex. Note that project has a Vista name in it, yet it runs under Windows 7 only – both x64 and x86. The idea is to trick OS to believe that mouse pointers are in reality fingers. This is done through a custom driver and a couple of services. I’ve tried to make it work with a single mouse to simulate panning and it worked on IE but not in my WPF 4.0 application for some reason. It was really a quick test and I should investigate why it isn’t working for my application further. But if I make it work this will be my way of doing multi touch until I get a proper multi touch monitor, possibly Acer T230H.
Conclusion
Obviously multitouch development requires either a very expensive full featured or a cheaper, but simplified and feature lacking hardware. If you don’t want to spend any money at all then you have to check the MultitouchVista project. If you are looking for a cheap dual touch monitor then Acer T230H sounds like a good choice.
Note that the hardware characteristics in this post aren’t based on real experience but rather on the data collected from internet.
If you have a different, or a better solution, or some real experience, please let me know.