Seminar II

Today was our second seminar, We decided that the scope of our seminar will be regarding the hardware model in our project...
Here is the presentation ::




Currently, The work on the project is paused because we are having exams & projects, we will be back by 25th of January in shaa Allah..

Seminar I

Today was our first seminar, el 7amdolellah it was perfect.. wishing next ones will be the same & better in shaa Allah..

- Picture of the Touchwork team members before the seminar -
LTR: Mohammad Fouad - Alaa Shaker - Mahmoud Osama - Roaa Mohammed

"Flashing" ..

This is the first presentation for our seminar .. finally finished :D
Navigate using Left and Right arrows ..

Waiting for your comments ..

First Seminar Next Week ..

Yeah, we're just done with out midterms, and we're having our first seminar next week .. !!
I'm working now on the Flash presentation, hope finishing it before the weekend won't kill me .. !!

We have settled on the expected time plan .. and according to that, we're in the first week of our second sprint out of six!! We have like less than 18 not-fully-dedicated weeks .. :| (The time plan and the presentation will be embedded in a later post once ready)
Moreover, we decided to use CodePlex for source control, using Microsoft Visual Studio's Team Foundation Server Client ..

Roaa and I also went to ITWorx's "Academia Bridge" Orientation, they should contact us soon to set a meeting for a presentation there .. Hopefully, we'll get their sponsorship isA ..
Also, we spoke to Mohamed Wahby from Microsoft Egypt for the sponsorship issue, it's done a7l ..

ToDo List (Thursday):

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• Fouad: Finalize the input code, fix the camera thing, and upload to CodePlex
  
• Roaa: Fix and finish the blob detection code for the current phase
  
• Mahmoud: Research tracking algorithms
  
• Alaa: Finish the presentation so we can rehearse next Saturday isA
  

Also, we might go check some places for the silicone sheet, and perhaps we can do a live demo then using the HW ..

Project Proposal and Presentation Template ...

"Touchwork" Project Proposal is now finalized into a Portable Document (.pdf file) ..
A PowerPoint presentation template was made to be used in the coming seminars ..

The Project Proposal can be downloaded from here ..

Essence of a Touch ..

Today, a7l, was the first essence of a "touch" ..
After our first meeting with Prof. Dr. Ashraf Saad, we finally succeeded to force a "finger-touch" all the way through to a "mouse-click" that drew a point on Paint ..

We integrated Roaa's code for Blob Detection with Mahmoud's code for sending Mouse-Clicks to the Windows Message Queue, all into Fouad's previous WTL Application .. No one of course was that optimistic to see the code run successfully from the first time, but it really amazed us how quickly it worked out eventually ..
Unfortunately, we had to use a preRecorded video of appearing and disappearing blobs for testing instead of a live feed from the webcam .. a couple of code changes to be made n that'll be ready isA ..

Finally, we discussed how the current code should map the designed modules .. We'll refactor the code now to meet the interfaces we agreed upon ..

To Do List:

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• Prepare our presentation for our first seminar (that's in a couple of weeks) and send it over to Dr. Ashraf Saad along with our project proposal for revision ..
• Build an application with the modules "twInput", "twDetector" and "twAgent", along with an "ApplicationManager" to coordinate between them and the WTL Application (UI) ..
• Work out each of the previous modules separately according to the agreed interfaces ..
• Fix the webcam live feed thing .. n test for real ..
  
• Try to find a silicone sheet !!!
  

First Deliverable ..

Well, a7l, the first deliverable is out .. Thanks to Fouad, the hero!!

Fouad wrote a small application (C++, WTL) that discovers the available camera drivers on the machine, allows you to pick any connected camera or video file (.avi or .mpg n I guess .mov) .. starts a video stream from either source .. and finally produces a sequence of "frames" from that stream ..
There's a callback function where you'll receive a byte array (the bitmap, the frame), its size, and BITMAPINFOHEADER struct that holds all necessary details about the passed bitmap (width, height, stride, etc.) ..
The next step is to execute a Blob Detection algorithm on each frame to detect the present blobs ..

One last thing, I updated the project proposal I sent five days ago and sent it again to ITWorx, sent with the new logo for Touchwork ..
I sent it @ 5:56pm .. 5 hrs and 5 min earlier than the deadline this time!!!

7 minutes late .. !!!

OK, so this is my first post here ..
We've started this project quite a time ago .. I'll try to push the work done here ASAP ..

The last updates was that we were supposed to send a project proposal to ITWorx, the deadline was yDay @ 11pm .. I'm soooooo sick n I've been squeezing myself for the last 3 days to get done with it ..
I sent the email yDay to ITWorx with the proposal @ 11:07pm :| :| :|
I was like woooooooooohhh OMG :|

Fortunately, Sherif Ibrahim from Academia Bridge, ITWorx, has replied to my email 2day .. I asked him if we could edit the proposal at a later time n he said we have till the 15th @ 11pm again .. lol
Hopefully we don't miss it this time :D

More updates and information rushing in soon ...

Touchwork.. Hello World

This blog is made to keep track of the progress & updates of our graduation project known as 'Touchwork'.

About Touchwork:

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Touchwork comes from the combination of both words 'Multi Touch' and 'Framework'..
Touchwork is a development framework that processes and handles user-input from multi modal input devices such as multi touch screens.


Who are we??

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We are a group of students of faculty of computer & information sciences, Ain shams university.. we are ::
1 - Ala'a Shaker
2 - Mahmoud Osama
3 - Mohammed Fouad
4 - Roaa Mohammed