
Another great Holocube project. The first cube with touch interface.
The demo sets a mood with color LEDs.
Setting colors is only one of the multiple possibilities.
The project was featured on Engadget, UberGizmo, I4U
and Coolest Gadgets

Another great Holocube project. The first cube with touch interface.
The demo sets a mood with color LEDs.
Setting colors is only one of the multiple possibilities.
The project was featured on Engadget, UberGizmo, I4U
and Coolest Gadgets
crossposted on labs.boulevart.be
I’m a big fan of writeable bitmaps.
When drawing more then 1000 items on screen writeable bitmaps performs a zillion times better then individual objects.
Based on WriteableBitmap Class MSDN sample it’s peanuts creating a fullscreen drawing application.
After modifying DirectionalBlur shader from the WPFFX I got the this little drawing app.
The above demo was done on a MSI windtop touchscreen (dual core 1.5Ghz Atom CPU)
Use M to (de)activate the mouse.
Use F to toggle fullscreen.
Use ESC to exit the application.
After a little delay due some supplier problems the final prototype screen is up and running !
The results are great:
Our project goal was to create a fun application which could elaborate the screen’s full potential.
The puzzle created by Boulevart makes good use of the touch technology. It would be much slower to operate with a traditional mouse.
Hardware
Case design by Joris Vanbriel from Holocube.
Joris and Jan Vanbriel did a great job solving all the hardware issues.
Current prototype uses a 46” plasma with a built-in Mac Mini. Final project will use a Mini-Itx with IDE flash memory to save space and provide a faster startup.
Software
The application is built on WPF technology which suits perfectly for the job.
WPF does great on spreading the appliction load onto multiple CPU cores and can use GPU hardware acceleration.
Playing these 1360 * 720 fullscreen videos results in 30% CPU load on a 1.7 Ghz dual core setup.
Realtime video slicing using WPF’s Visualbrush.
Movie and demo by Arne Jennard

Some months ago I had the chance to work a week at a super project with the guys from Holocube.
The project description was simple do something cool with a single touch 42″ screen.
Hardware by Holocube and software by Boulevart .
With the official release of Silverlight 3 RTW I received some feedback that my plasma sample wasn’t working anymore.
The problem occurs in some small changes in the Writeable bitmap api.
The official MS change document talks about the new constructor and the lock methods.
The PixelFormat parameter for the WriteableBitmap constructor has been removed. WriteableBitmap(int pixelWidth, int pixelHeight, PixelFormat format) is now WriteableBitmap(int pixelWidth, int pixelHeight).
The only supported PixelFormat is now Pbgra32.
Similarly, the PixelFormat and PixelFormats type has been removed.Lock() and Unlock() have been removed.
But that’s not the only thing.
From now on you have to use the pixels property to write or read pixels.
I updated my previous sample and code.
For those of you who aren’t member of the Belgian Silverlight User Group there’s a upcoming workshop on September 10th 2009.
In this workshop, we will build a small Silverlight 3.0 application showing some of the new concepts like out of browser, animation easing, deeplinking, pixel effects, importing Photoshop files and perspective 3D. Some experience with Silverlight 2.0 is required for this workshop.
The workshop is organized with the cooperation of Boulevart
Be quick because there only a few places left.
Register at http://www.besug.be.
Updated on 15/07/2009 to Silverlight 3 RTW
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It’s finally finished, my first Silverlight mini game.
In exception from the title image it’s 100% XAML.
All graphics done in MS Expression Design.
Had some small problems in blend, everything else was pretty straightforward.
If you have a background in .NET programming the transition will be smooth.
Enjoy !
Doing easing in and out in blend is pretty straightforward.
Creating that same storyboard in C# is just a mater of syntax.
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