IDEO Labs

At IDEO we’re all about building to think. Learning from books and websites and product demos is cool, but we think the really good stuff comes when you get in there and start messing around for real.

In the case of multi-touch interfaces, that meant building a system we could start prototyping on. What we wanted was:

• a multi-touch display large enough to facilitate use by several people at once
• an API for flash that would let us quickly prototype multi-touch interfaces and applications

It took us about 5 weeks to get everything together. Kyle, one of our all-around gearheads, had already been building a drafting-table-style FTIR system in his garage which helped kick-start us.

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Timer1 is an AVR and Arduino compatible software library for the ATmega168 microcontroller. It provides a user friendly interface for taking advantage of two commonly used features of an on-chip hardware timer:

• pulse width modulated analog voltage
• timer overflow interrupt handling.

Initially this library was built to address the fact that Arduino’s analogWrite() function does not provide a mechanism to change the period or frequency of any of the timers which drive hardware based pulse width modulation, but it has since grown to accommodate the interrupt handling features as they are related and just downright useful.

Some of the things we have used the library for on projects in house include:

• CPU independent servo control
• Frequency generation in the audible range (digital synthesis)
• Integrated hardware / software PWM control for independently variable analog voltages on 12 pins simultaneously (4x RGB leds)

You can download the library and learn much more about the project by visiting our page on the Arduino Playground at: http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Code/Timer1