18-Foot Multitouch Wall and New Multitouch Tech Hit the Streets 50
Danny writes to tell us that Obscura Digital has launched their largest multitouch wall yet. 18 feet of multitouch surface is divided to allow six simultaneous users, each with their own targeted audio. The massive wall can handle 100 hi-res images and videos together in real-time. Relatedly, Atmel recently announced the release of their "maXTouch" technology, which delivers a capacitive touchscreen that boasts a refresh rate and signal-to-noise ratio that's 66% better than their nearest competitor. Hopefully this means massive multitouch surfaces will be coming into my home sooner rather than later.
Don't expect chips in a hurry (Score:3, Informative)
Atmel makes some great microcontrollers, but their recent record of delivery is very poor and it has hurt their reputation. In particular, Atmel announced the XMEGA range of AVR micros years ago, but they repeatedly failed to become available: see AvrFreaks [avrfreaks.net] for just one of many discussions on the topic. A limit subset of the range is just becoming readily purchaseable now.
There are various theories about why Atmel has had such delays in producing the XMEGAs: upper management turmoil, the distraction of a takeover attempt by Microchip, the change to being fab-less, and serious bugs in the early XMEGA production efforts.
I hope I'm wrong, but I wouldn't be too surprised if these new chips aren't physically available for a long time.