2012-2013-Smart Control

SmartControl

by Jan Veldthuis and Wouter Nederhof

For our project we wanted to make a system where you can control objects on a projected screen using your smartphone, inspired by systems such as Microsoft Surface and large wall-mounted touch screens. Because a lot of people have touch screen smartphones these days, instead of requiring people to buy these large, expensive touch screens, we wanted to make use of the smaller touch screens people already have in their pockets.

SmartControl consists of two parts, a server and an Android app. All thats necessary to use it is a PC to run the server on, a projector or large screen and one or more smartphones. Every object on the screen has its own QR code as a label. After scanning one of these codes using the Android app, you get a screen with a large touchpad to control the object you just scanned. Moving the object using one finger, and rotating and scaling the object with two is supported.

Multiple people can control the same object, but obviously just like with the large touchscreens you'll counteract eachothers movements and just get in each other's way.

There are a few different kinds of objects: notes, images and links. Notes are like sticky notes you can place on the screen, like "Get eggs". Images are basically special forms of links; the server displays image links as the image itself rather than a text link. The server also recognises Youtube links and displays them with a Youtube icon rather than the generic "WWW" icon.