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Light Blue Optics touch interface pico projector passes through the FCC
Last time we saw Light Blue Optics' Light Touch, it was deep in the bowels of CES, where we got to play with its touch-sensitive projections. Well, the little laser pico projector has finally made its way from that dark trade show corner into the bright lights of the FCC. It still turns any flat area into a WVGA touchscreen using holographic laser projection (HLP) and infrared sensors, only now it's more finger friendly and supports multi-touch gestures. It also has a 3.5mm headphone jack and a single mono speaker so you aren't surface computing in silence, and there are composite video and micro-USB ports for pulling content from other devices. Of course, the Light Touch still only projects a 10.1-inch image, so it won't be turning your wall into a touchscreen. But, it should do just fine turning a tray table, desk, or perhaps even the nearest person planking into one.
Light Blue Optics' Light Touch turns any surface into a color touchscreen display (video hands-on)
Ever heard of a small company called Light Blue Optics? Probably not. But it's companies like LBO that make events like CES truly worthwhile. Tucked away in a small suite overshadowed by the million dollar spreads owned by industry giants like Samsung and Sony is a tiny startup looking to attract the attention of OEMs with its full-color holographic laser projection technology. The Windows CE-powered Light Touch represents the company's very first effort to create an interactive projector that allows users to interact with the displayed image as they would a modern touchscreen display. Despite our skepticism, we came away suitably surprised -- impressed even. Granted, our hands-on was performed in a lowly-lit room on par with the lighting you might find in a fine restaurant. Still, the 15 lumens were effective at lighting videos and the touch sensitivity was far more accurate than we expected -- so good that we were quickly typing out phrases on the QWERTY with few mistakes (admittedly taking a reasonable amount of care to strike the right "key"). The projector only supports single-touch at the moment though multi-touch is just a software tweak away. See the video after the break and prepare to be suitably amazed at watching a laser projector create a touchscreen display.%Gallery-81902%
Light Blue Optics unveils Light Touch: a 10-inch touchscreen pico projector based on lasers (video)
They promised us a device in 2010 and sure enough, Light Blue Optics just announced Light Touch. As the name implies, LBO's product is a laser projector that turns any flat surface into an auto-focused and image-adjusted 10-inch touchscreen with WVGA resolution thanks to its laser- (not LED) based pico projection engine dubbed HLP (holographic laser projection) and infrared touch-sensing system. Light Touch runs Adobe Flash Lite 3.1 and includes WiFi and Bluetooth radios, 2GB of on-board storage (with microSD slot for up to 32GB more), and a battery capable of about 2-hours worth of runtime. We'll be getting up close and personal with the mini projector here at CES so until then, feast your eyes on the simulated demo and usage scenarios after the break.
