[youtube]http://youtu.be/UxBBcZoqQgs[/youtube]
I assume that some of you have heard about the touchscreen "table" made by Microsoft and called Surface, and you know that it has been used in many cinematographic productions and not only that. Although that table is interesting, a company produced another which is composed of 15 iPad tablets, and in the video clip above you can see it. All those tablets are interconnected through a Wi-Fi network and a router, and together they form a large tactile surface that anyone can use.
The table is made up of 15 iPads all connected to the same wireless connection, the iPads are not hardwired into any network. We have a small wireless router on its own private network relaying the communication to each iPad. Each iPad is listing to those messages and then reacts accordingly when asked to do something. The great thing about the application running on each iPad is that it makes for a truly configurable set up. With the controlling iPhone application we can do several things. For example we can set the background color and duration to easily fade colors. We can also reset the experience as well as a nice little kill switch to quickly close all the applications.
The tablets can be configured in almost any formation, they are controlled using an iPhone application and can display almost any kind of images together. The idea is very interesting, it is not really that practical, but in the future there will probably be better ways to implement everything.
