I just posted an article at Code Project for Multi-Touch Robot Control on Windows 7 using Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 and WPF 4.0.  All the source code is available for download.  First time I've posted to Code Project.  It was relatively easy to do.

I loaded a video up to YouTube so you can see the app running with the NXT robot.

My entry for the Code7Contest was putting Windows 7 in my truck.  I own a 09 Toyota Tundra.  I put a laptop mount in the truck and attached my HP Touchsmart tx2 tablet.   I use it as a platform to capture sensors and location information as I'm driving.  In addition to sensors and video attached to the laptop, I also access the OBD II port on my vehicle to capture the data that my truck computers/sensors are generating.  Other features of the app was to read documents using TTS to me as I'm driving and synchronize with my HomeGroup.  I also used voice recognition to have the app quiz me.  Biggest issue there was getting accurate recognition in a noisy vehicle with a desktop mic.  I will be looking at ways to improve that.

The contest rules required me to create a video that was no longer than 3 minutes and/or 10MB file size so I'm not able to show all the functionality.    They don't provide a direct link to the video I uploaded to their site so I've uploaded the video to YouTube for your viewing pleasure.  Watch for more videos on YouTube showing more of the app's functionality.

I posted a new article called WPF Scrolling Content with Flicks and Gestures.  I had been looking for a way to scroll content without a scroll bar.  So I started with a ScrollViewer control in WPF and added a StackPanel with Images.  The article shows how to scroll content by clicking directly on the image content.  And it shows how to animate the content scrolling with flicks.  I included gesture feature to zoom the main image.  Take a look at the video and tell me what you think....   Enjoy!!

The article that I just wrote was tested on the HP TouchSmart tx2.  This code should also run on the Dell Latitude XT and XT2 Tablet PC as well.  Those products use the same N-Trig hardware.

I don't have a Dell Latitude Tablet PC at my disposal so if there is anyone who reads this article that has one, I would greatly appreciate hearing from you if you were able to make the code work.

Thanks...

Posted a new article on how to access gestures and flicks on an HP TouchSmart tx2 tablet PC.

Gesture Blocks article

I'm excited about multi-touch interfaces. I recently received an HP TouchSmart tx2 tablet PC. It uses DuoSense technology by N-Trig. The DuoSense technology combines a capacitive screen for touch and magnetic pen based input. Basically it allows the user to chose only touch, only pen input or both simultaneously. Built on top of this technology we have Multi-Touch Gestures(MTG) and Multi-Touch Messages(MTM). MTG works with Vista OS. Gestures use two fingers. MTM only works on Windows 7. MTM allows more than two fingers to be sensed.

Coming next will be a post about writing C# code for accessing the gestures...

Windows 7 beta does not immediately give the user multi-touch demos which is what I was hoping for.  So I loaded up Visual Studio 2008 and started looking for examples out there for multi-touch support.  A few links that I've found so far are below.  Some have source code and some of them also have hardware as well.

WPF Multi-Touch Framework

Sparse UI - Multi-Touch API

Cubit TouchKit - Okay this is just cool cuz they give you schematics and source code for your own hardware/software project

Johnny Chung - Wiimote tracking your fingers

Ken Moore Design - cool projects

I got Windows 7 beta and decided to try loading it onto a virtual machine.  I've been using VM Workstation which has been an excellent product for creating virtual machines for other operating systems.  However, when I tried installing Windows 7 beta x86 into a VM, the install locked up and I couldn't get it to continue.  Don't know what I'm doing wrong.  Now that my laptop is back from repair at HP, I decided to load Win 7 onto my HP TouchSmart panel.  Backed up the whole machine to my Win Home Server, wiped it clean and loaded Win 7 beta x64 directly onto the TouchSmart.  It worked like a charm.  No problems with the install.  After the install, Win 7 booted right up and downloaded updates.  I'm mostly interested in seeing what I can do with multi-touch support on the TouchSmart.  I've got Visual Studio 2008 loading right now.  I read online that it is possible to create multi-touch apps using .NET 3.5 sp1.  It isn't the full support that will be in WPF 4.0.  I will post my results as soon as I get something working.