The Prawn

The Touchscape Prawn can be thought of as "out of the box" multitouch. It has been designed to help those not comfortable with a soldering iron get into using this technology. The Prawn has many nice features about it that make it an ideal hackers tool!

For starters the shape has been designed so the display can be used up-side down and on its side. Multiple prawns can also be stacked and installations can be enabled through embedding Prawn technology into them. The finish on the units is a very hi-gloss acrylic (ipod esque).

The Prawn is designed to come apart into an outer shell and innards. This means things like the camera can easily be swapped for other options as well as extra components (e.g speakers or even a PC) can be stuffed inside. All the dimensions for the Prawn are made available to facilitate this process.

In terms of software and compatibility, The Prawn appears as a standard VGA monitor. This means it is as happy working with Linux as it is OSX or Windows. The tracking software is completely down the user too, however most of the documentation is focussed around using CCV from NUI Group.

For those wishing to get their hands dirty a guide is also available on how to construct a prawn from scratch. The guide goes through all the steps necessary from dismantling a monitor, to designing the case.

Prawns are available now to buy at:

http://www.touchscape.org/?page=products&cat=5&product=8 

A getting started video is online at : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZx65b8xaBc 

Documentation is at : http://www.touchscape.org/developer/