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MultiTouch intros new SDK for touchscreen digital signage displays

October 4, 2013

Interactive display systems provider MultiTouch Ltd. has announced that the new Cornerstone 2 — MultiTouch's own software development kit — will be available free of charge and support other hardware platforms in addition to MultiTouch's MultiTaction Cell product line.

The new version, released on Oct. 3, features a free set of tools to take full advantage of MultiTaction Cells' scalability and advanced object and pen tracking features, the company said. Support for third-party hardware allows great flexibility for deployment and re-use of Cornerstone-based applications on a wide range of multitouch displays from other manufacturers, according to the announcement.

In addition to making its updated SDK free, MultiTouch said the new Cornerstone 2 also includes a greater arsenal of tools to build the next generation of interactive applications. A key new feature is support for development with JavaScript in addition to traditional C++, which grows the pool of potential developers. Cornerstone 2 scales from single displays to 50-megapixel walls with up to 50-percent performance increase compared to previous versions of Cornerstone.

As operational requirements for interactive display installations increase, a means of controlling applications remotely becomes more necessary, the company said. Cornerstone 2 includes built-in support for remote management and control of applications by integrating with MultiTaction Site Manager, a tool that facilitates the control of thousands of globally-dispersed displays.

"This update to Cornerstone answers many of the requests made by the developers of interactive display applications," MultiTouch CTO Tommi Ilmonen said in the announcement. "As more people adopt multitouch technologies, more applications are created and we want to set a high standard in the tools that the developers have at their disposal."

Cornerstone 2 SDK offers developers a flexible toolkit for writing applications for interactive displays. Supporting C++ and JavaScript APIs, it allows styling via CSS and comes bundled with a set of stock applications that can be customized for specific customer needs. The addition of third-party hardware support will enable developers to import touch events to Cornerstone 2 SDK from third-party touch displays that are compatible with Windows Touch or TUIO.

Learn more about touchscreen digital signage.