Trying to get actual x y position of finger on touchpad

soundslikesounds's icon

I'm working on a patch that will involve using a (windows) laptop touchpad as a drawing surface, sort of like the inklet app on Mac, however I'm having trouble figuring out a way to get the raw x y data to Max and not the position of the pointer as you get from the mousestate object.

Anyone got any ideas? Any help would be much appreciated.

brendan mccloskey's icon

Hi
is this touchpad an external (USB) device? If so, there are two possibilities (I know of): one is the [hi] object; the other is to hack the touchpad, and get the voltages into an Arduino.

Brendan

FRid's icon

Hi,

Wouldn't it also be possible to reverse the mousestate-data to the raw data (if you know what the resolution is of the touchpad) by dividing the screen-resolution with the touchpad-resolution? I mean it's probably the same way it adjusts itself to different screen-resolutions (800*600, 1024*768, etc)

FRid

FRid's icon
Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

Patches say a lot more than words

soundslikesounds's icon

That's a good idea extrapolating back from the mousestate data, however that requires the finger to be in contact with the touchpad at all times, whereas I'd rather be able to put a finger down at any point and for that location to be recognised. In theory it must be possible as there are bits in the device settings dialogues that show a diagram of the touchpad area which show where the finger is in contact with it to calibrate scrolling areas etc. (it is an internal one in answer to your question n00b_meister), it's a matter of getting at that data somehow which is a bit beyond me.
[hi] looks promising however I can't get it to see the touchpad yet, I guess because it's internal and not usb, I'll keep at it though.
Any further ideas would be much appreciated. Thanks!

kala's icon
lasmiveni's icon

fingerpinger is really well done... thanks for sharing.

soundslikesounds's icon

Fingerpinger looks great, but it's only on Mac, and I'm firmly stuck in PC land at the moment unless I can make one of my crusty old laptops into a Hackintosh, although I'm guessing driver issues in that case would make the situation worse. Aaaannndd, sadly [hi] doesn't seem able to see any hardware on my machine, or even a usb mouse. Getting frustrated.

OCH's icon

anyone has new insight into this?
regarding a cross-platform solution?

Source Audio's icon

hi can't see any keyboards or mice on windows.
That is windows system restriction, not HI object's fault.

Joe X Med O''s icon

is there a way to disable those restrictions so [hi] can get system hardware?