The Surface Tracker is an open source application for low latency multi-touch finger tracking. It was designed initially for our Multi-Touch Everywhere system (MUTE), but it should be working more generally as well to track fingers which have been illuminated using the laser light plane method (LLP). It only supports low latency OptiTrack cameras; these cameras have a frame rate of up to 100 frames per second, but due to their onboard image processing, these cameras only consume 3-5% of your computer's CPU (depending on your processor).

The Surface Tracker is a standalone application, which sends Open Sound Control messages to any connected client application at a user defineable IP address and port. It implements the TUIO protocol, which was specially designed for transmitting multi-touch events on a table surface.

The Surface Tracker is currently only available on Windows. This is due to the fact that the driver for OptiTrack camera's is currently only available on Windows. We are, however, currently having discussions with the makers of the OptiTrack camera about extending support of their cameras to OS-X.

Download the current version of the Surface Tracker at SourceForge 

The Surface Editor is an open platform for transforming any TUIO compatible multitouch input device into a MIDI or OSC controller. Control interfaces are created easily with the Surface Editor, simply by dragging and dropping virtual control elements, such as faders, buttons and knobs, on the working area. The Surface Editor can be extended with user programmed plug-ins writen in Java or Processing. It is currently only available on Windows.

To get the Surface Editor, please send an email to editor(at)future-instruments(dot)net. You will get an answer with a link to download it within 24 to 48 hours.

Why that? Asking real people to get something creates a very different dynamic than just clicking on a download button. By doing so, we want to establish a closer link with people interested in using our software, and be able to follow up our first users. This is also a way to know how many people are using our application and who they are. So, don't hesitate to tell a few words about your project and how you heard about our work when sending us an email :-)