Question

I have an a demo in Matlab that I would like to send multiple touch events from (to the operating system) as if someone was touching the screen. I want to be able to supply 5 to 10 touch points and their coordinates.
How can this be done on a machine without a touch input hardware but with the touch drivers installed … ?

Answer 1

This seems to be somewhat more complicated than one might imagine.
Currently the best solution on Windows 7 uses MultiTouchVista and TUIO.

1) Download MultiTouchVista

2) Activate Pen and Touch

3) Run Multitouch.Service.Console.exe

4) Run Multitouch.Driver.Console.exe

5) Run Multitouch.Configuration.WPF.exe and choose TUIO

6) Download oscsend for sending OSC frames as required by TUIO.

Here is some sample code to send 5 touch points to the screen in a loop.

clear all
u = udp('127.0.0.1',3333);
fopen(u);
fprintf('Opened\n');
pause(0.5);
n = 0;

%%
pause(5);
while 1

    x = 0.5;
    y = 0.5;

    for t = -0.2:0.01:0.2
        oscsend(u , '/tuio/2Dcur' , 'siiiii' , 'alive' , 5*n,5*n+1,5*n+2,5*n+3,5*n+4);
        oscsend(u , '/tuio/2Dcur' , 'sifffff' , 'set' , 5*n,   x + t, y - 0.2, 0, 0, 0);
        oscsend(u , '/tuio/2Dcur' , 'sifffff' , 'set' , 5*n+1, x + t, y - 0.1, 0, 0, 0);
        oscsend(u , '/tuio/2Dcur' , 'sifffff' , 'set' , 5*n+2, x + t, y      , 0, 0, 0);
        oscsend(u , '/tuio/2Dcur' , 'sifffff' , 'set' , 5*n+3, x + t, y + 0.1, 0, 0, 0);
        oscsend(u , '/tuio/2Dcur' , 'sifffff' , 'set' , 5*n+4, x + t, y + 0.2, 0, 0, 0);        
        oscsend(u , '/tuio/2Dcur' , 'siiiii' , 'fseq' ,  5*n,5*n+1,5*n+2,5*n+3,5*n+4);
        pause(0.01);        
    end

    n = n + 1;
    fprintf('Sent\n');
    pause(1);
end

%%

fclose(u);
fprintf('Closed\n');

You might not see anything except for a moving mouse but the operating system is receiving the touches and if you open one of Microsoft’s Touch-Pack examples you can see the multiple touch points. Heres a screen shot from FruitNinja Lite