Microsoft's cool Surface computing device costs $12,000 and is not yet available to the public, so the folks over at Maximum PC decided that they're going to build their own Surface-like computing device using open-source software.

The result: a fully-functional multitouch device that lets you play games, manipulate documents, and use google earth-like applications. The final price of all the custom hardware was less than $500, not including the actual computer and a borrowed projector.

Maximum PC's post details their entire build process and explains the technology behind their DIY multitouch machine:

There is, it turns out, a whole community of very smart folks out there on the internet perfecting the art of building DIY multi-touch surfaces. The process isn’t exactly simple, but the results we saw were stunning: multitouch surfaces with responsiveness rivaling Microsoft’s $12,000 offering, built in a garage on a shoestring budget. “Future UI article be damned,” we thought, “we’ve gotta build one of these for ourselves.”

And so we did. We documented the whole process, from start to finish, so that you can try building one of your own, if you’re so inspired. We’re not going to claim to have done everything perfectly the first time, so think of this article as more of a build log than a definitive how-to.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by notdagreatbrain.