Recently we were asked to write some software for our surface to be used in a live election show on local television. Because the time to create the application was limited (little over three weeks) we could only create a basic application. However, we managed to get in some nice features that added value to the (over five our) television show.

The people of the network asked us to create the following:

• an application on the surface that could be used by the host of the show to present election results and discuss these with an expert guest.
• make sure the host and expert could choose the results they wanted to discuss.
• not only make sure the application presented the results on the table, but it had to provide a full screen output of the results as well (which could then be mixed in to the show by the director)

This is the setup we realized for this television show:

Once the application had been written we went into the studio to test the application in the circumstances that it was to be used. Trying to use the surface in a well lid studio was not trivial. Two days before we entered the studio the complete lighting had been set-up. Unfortunately this had been done using ambient lights and spots containing a lot of infra-red light.

As you might have guessed (and we should have too) a surface does not operate very well under (IR-)spots. We therefore had to adapt our application to maximize the use of the inputs that still could be seen. By writing our proper manipulations and gestures we were able to make the table behave as it should under the spots. However, smaller movements could not be detected. This prevented us from implementing all features that we would have liked.

In order to prevent running in to problems you should make sure that the studio is equiped with one of the following types of lighting: LED, KenoFlow, or other non (hot IR) illumination.

Below you will find some pictures of how the surface was built into the set.

 
How the surface was built into the desk.

 
How the studio looks like on camera. The surface is nicely build into the desk.

 
Overview shot of the studio.

 
The view the host of the show has during the show.

 
Our little desk from where we could select the results, move them onto the surface, control the full screen video output, etc.

I'll post some video fragments of the show and how the surface was used pretty soon.