The Multitouch Cell

Multitouch Oy, a multi-touch company in Helsinki Finland, has recently (as far as I know) introduced their own multi-touch platform called Multitouch Cell. There are a lot of things that are interesting about this product including its Lego-like modularization. Each display is self contained but they can be assembled into larger displays. That's very cool! Displays come in 32" and 46" models with HD.

Another thing that is really cool is that the displays, even a large cluster of them, will run off a standard Mac, Windows, or Linux box. So you can use your current computer (assuming its fairly modern) to run the cornerstone software that does the touch tracking and runs the applications.

I haven't found out yet what the SDK is - I suspect its C++ but I've put out a request for more information and will let you know when I find out more.

Update: Jan 16, 2009

Multitouch Oy was kind enough to send me more details about pricing and the SDK. The price of the 32" cell is currently 5,700 Euros (~ $7, 550.00 US). This model is about the same size as the Microsoft Surface but obviously less expensive and it offers higher resolution images. Where Surface supports 1024 x 768 the Multitouch Cell supports 1920 x 1080. That's a pretty significant difference in terms of resolution. Of course its not clear to me if their inferred camera is more sensitive or not. The 46" model, which is quite a bit larger than Surface, is currently priced at 11,500 Euros (~ $15,200.00 US) which is close the price you'll pay for a Surface unit for development.

In addition to the cost of a cell you will also need to buy a SDK license which costs 2,000 Euro (~ $2,600.00 US) so the grand total for a 32" Cell with developer SDK is 7,700 Euros (~ $10, 200.00 US). The cost of a 42" Cell is with developer license would be 13,500 Euros (~ $17,850.00 US) which doesn't include shipping. That's a lot more than a surface but at 42" its a lot larger too.

The SDK itself is written in C++ so you'll need to know your C++ to do any development. That's a barrier to a lot of developers but Multitouch Oy plans to eventually support other languages including Flash and even Processing (a very cool Java visualization language) in the future via interprocess communication using XML and eventually other formats including the TUIO protocol.