Hi, guys, we will continuously update our blog in the future, nearly one or two pieces per day, from which you can not only timely comprehend our products, promotion activities, tutorials  and guides, but also, to some extent more importantly,  a great amount of information about the innovation and maker field will be presented in this platform.Today, we will share with you something about the open source laser projection keyboard.  

The idea of projecting a virtual keyboard using a laser is very cool. But currently the existing product is a little bit expensive.Here, the design we introduce is  open source and low-cost , and if you are interested,  you can DIY your own laser projection keyboard  The design supports multiple key inputs (up to 10 keys) and works just like a normal keyboard on Windows and MacOS.

Mechanism

The  laser projection keyboard relies on Computer Vision processing algoritm to work. A  camera-laser system is used to perform distance measuring tasks. The keyboard hardware is very simple, only three parts are required: one camera, one laser to project the keyboard pattern and a line laser for key input detection. That’s the secret of low cost.

When a user presses a “virtual key”, the reflected laser light will be captured by the camera. And a signal processing software installed on the PC/Mac performs all the critical jobs: recognizing the user’s finger top , performing distance measurement and mapping the position of the user finger top to the related key value  

http://vimeo.com/65279983  

How to build one?

The easiest way is to order a DIY kit. The kit includes all the stuffs you will need to build a laser projection keyboard.  Also it will provide you a detailed guide to help you during the assembly process.  

More  : http://www.robopeak.net/blog/