Lighting and Touch area Updates

Not too much new in terms of highly visible updates from
last week's images and software screen capture (below):

Blog 7 Post Summer from Aaron Lieb on Vimeo.

Important things pictured in this clip are:

- Hardware -

The lighting solution for the surface, as I mentioned, is
a two-fold approach using the IR Led strip from 3m.
The first strip of LEDs spans two sides of the plexiglass
surface for direct illumination. This helps the camera
see very clear blobs for finger touching of the surface
as direct contact from anything rubbery (like a finger)
will break the IR beam.

The second piece is the softbox illuminator for the
ReacTivision tokens/fidicuals. This was better achieve
with IR light as opposed to visible light as well.
One major change included properly mounting the
IR Lighting rig to the inside of the Softbox, and making
the power cable for this component detachable by including
a plug between it and the side LED strips.

- Software -

Still working out the ability to select Parameter nodes
of a visual using a touch selection that will in turn populate
a Touch Grid area with the appropriate touch control for
that type of parameter. I have successfully worked out touch
controls for a Single Value Slider, which can be reused as a
subcomponent of things like ColorPicker, Sound EQ sliders,
and other Value Sliders. This is a pretty basic component that
has come along in terms of functionality since last week.

Of course as soon as I finished creating this piece last night
some other unknown issue surfaced that will need to be worked
out before I can proceed. However, at this point I believe I am
closer than ever to connecting the dots between the touchable
menu components and controlling some sort of example visual
running in a separate window. Even if I just get the ColorPicker
and a basic value slider working from the touch menu I will
be able to achieve some interaction between these things for
next week.

The next steps following this include linking the interaction of
each parameter, not just to it's own native touch area, but also
node-to-node and/or linked to a midi control. A lot of the menu and
data model leg work to make these interactions were taken in to
consideration all along the way - it will just be a matter of populating
the components with the know-how to achieve these interactions.