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Open Source Driver for Microsoft Surface 2.0


Florian Echtler has developed an open-source driver for the Microsoft Surface 2.0 touch screen.

Microsoft Surface is a commercial surface computing platform from Microsoft that enables people to use and touch real world objects to share digital content at the same time. The Surface platform consists of software and hardware products that combine vision based multitouch PC hardware, 360-degree multiuser application design, and Windows software to create a natural user interface (NUI).

With Surface, it is possible for people to share, collaborate and explore together using a large, thin display that recognizes fingers, hands and other objects placed on the screen.

Microsoft Surface 2.0 in action:


According to Florian Echtler, the open source implementation works surprisingly well on Ubuntu 11.10. The process requires you to boot Linux on your Surface 2.0 in the first place. However, it can be done by just booting Ubuntu from a USB hard disk without modify anything on the original Win7 installation.

Check out the video:



The source code for the driver can be found on GitHub.

Florian Echtler will work further to integrate it with uTouch.

Right now, the provided tools just display the data and don't pass it on to Linux, so interaction with utouch isn't possible right now. But I hope I'll get around to writing an uinput bridge next week. 

For more details, see this discussion.

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