I’m potentially interested in this product given its specs are enough for custom API.
So, I have the following questions about the specification:
What is the resolution of the touchpad ?
What is the maximum number of frames available to PC per second, uncompressed ?
Hello, thank you for contacting us and it is great to hear you are interested in the Sensel Morph.
You can find most of this information on our guide: http://guide.sensel.com/morph/ and http://guide.sensel.com/api/.
To go into a bit more detail, there are a few types of resolution. The force image resolution of the Morph is 185 columns by 105 rows, but each sensing element can interpolate between the others so contacts (pens, fingers, etc) can be tracked with great accuracy. Our API limit for tracking is 6502 dots per inch.
The framerate is set to 125 frames per second by default, but it can be switched to high speed mode, which is about 500 frames per second.
Interpolation doesn’t count, the actual resolution counts. I’m interested in raw data API, to obtain the exact data from the sensor grid. For example, your API won’t work properly for mouse functionality by just interpolating the data, in fact, it would greatly decrease precision and functionality of the obtained data.
But if you are going to support fast input, one would need 2 touchpads, does your API support multidevice mode ?
500185105 ~ 10 M (1000 would be better for precise tracking) points per second, meaning that it would use a dedicated USB channel, if available. Do your low-level API drivers support frame buffer, peek and get operations for the raw data obtained ?
Hello, to clarify, each of the 19525 sensing elements can also detect thousands of levels of force. The interpolation is in the hardware itself, not software. This allows for high accuracy tracking between points.
Our API does support multiple devices. We also can return data as force data (array of floats) or contacts (http://guide.sensel.com/sensel_h/#SenselContact). Yes, our API supports frame buffers, peek and get operations. You can find all of the calls here http://guide.sensel.com/sensel_h/ and examples on our GitHub. Also, the API can give you the 500185105 points per second, but our firmware and API handle lossless compression and decompression respectively to minimize communication time.
Hardware acceleration means only the point, where the data a processed - and in your case, even building a custom ASIC would give you enormous power consumption due to the algorithm requirements, same goes for anything high-resolution, like cameras, gesture processing for 3D - they can’t be made currently within low budget and low power requirements, below 10W; like scanners, interpolation is harmful when the task is to manually process the data, in fact it lowers accuracy if there is a better computer-side algorithm. I’m interested in using the touchpad like faster keyboard, which would give maximum response time of up to 25% faster compared to mechanical ones with longer key movement.
What is the USB version you are using ? For 16 bit it would take a whole USB channel 2.0 to transfer the data continuously, at that resolution it is close to its limit (modern scanners are actually limited by USB mostly, while the scanner makers are not in a hurry to make new products before making most possible profit out of old models).
Also, do you use shared memory or some sort of memcpy (2x performance penalty) to give data to the user application ?
The Sensel Morph uses USB 2.0 and the Sensel API is open-source and can be found on our GitHub https://github.com/sensel/sensel-api.
OK, thanks, I will take a look at the possibilities with your hardware. My current purpose it to test the input speed of different keyboard devices, and yours looks promising.
I’ve seen the project there. Would you consider writing some more advanced API if I send your the specification ?
Anyway, I’ve tried to order the product, but without any results, that is the company who handles the paperwork, didn’t receive any notification or information about the delivery (I’m not crazy to handle the legal procedures myself about dealing with unreliable small-scale business) and they were forced to take actions to get the money back. I’m deeply disappointed in your business. Hopefully when you solve the availability and other problems, you can honestly notify people about it.
Hi Programmer,
We’re sorry about the issues you had. Are you located in Europe? We’ve sorted out shipping to Europe and all of our European customers have had their Morphs shipped.
If there’s anything we can do to help, please email us at support@sensel.com.
Kind regards,
Mark
I believe the company ordered it from USA. But they didn’t receive any timely information regarding delivery after payment and were forced to take actions to return the money (I suppose they will inform me about the whole situation in a few days). You should have informed the customers about the potential problems earlier. Most likely they will mark your business as unreliable and won’t take orders for at least half a year. And I will not bother myself with potential risks. I might as well go for parts for more expensive tracking hardware, more precise and 3D, with 10x cost for the parts only.
I’m intrigued by your statement “I might as well go for parts for more expensive tracking hardware, more precise and 3D, with 10x cost for the parts only.” I’d be very interested in knowing what other tracking hardware you are referring to. Thanks!
Smaller version of motion tracking hardware, similar to the equipment used to animate movies. Something similar to its cheap version was 3D glove on kickstarter, with much cheaper version it failed to get the amount of money to get it produced, so as a commercial project it is not useful, but making a prototype for personal use with higher precision makes sense, except the price for the parts, labor and time - and it is cumbersome, requires a separate computer and professional calibration.
This is resolution parameter which you can find its setting menu and you can check Microsoft’s Surface and this will be good 3240 x 2160 resolution. Check a supper guide on hp touchpad not working for your touchpad parameters
