Printed paper poster that's an interactive drumkit - New Touch Technology ~ Utopia Magazine

Paper poster "drum kit" touch technology

A printed paper poster that's an interactive "drum kit". Conductive ink, touch and Bluetooth technology have all been around for a few years but a small team from Cambridge, England called Novalia has developed the technology, which works much like a smartphone touch screen, but on paper. What Is It & What Does It Do ? It's a poster, with smart-phone-like touch. By touching or tapping the poster you can play along with your favorite tunes and add beats.

How it works - Inside interactive paper poster

Working with some innovative sound technology the company turned the whole surface of the poster into a speaker. Not only do you hear the beats, but you feel them as you touch. They print the graphics on the face of the paper and on the reverse they print the touch sensors using electrically conductive ink.

To this they electrically attach a simple circuit board. The circuit board monitors the capacitance of each of the drum sensors and recognizes when the graphics are touched. When touching the drum it either plays the sounds directly out of the poster, or sends a wireless signal via bluetooth to the iOS device to play the drum sound.

The poster will work with Apple's iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, the iPad 3rd & 4th generation, iPad Mini and the iPod touch 5th generation onwards - unfortunately at this stage we're not able to run it on Android, Blackberry or Windows operating systems or on any earlier Apple devices, we're working on this, but in the meantime that's where the standalone poster would be perfect !

The Drum kit Poster and the technology that supports it is ready for full production. It’s only a fingertip away from being a reality. The company has been developing printed touch posters for the last six years.

Check out the Kickstarter website to see how close this team from UK are to completing their goal!

From my perspective a product like this could also be ideal for people with learning difficulties, problems with literacy, young people or even the blind. It could even be used for adults with dementia, re training their brains. Books designed with pictures and sounds. The possibilities are endless really.

Here is picture of a sound story book available on the current market. If the Drum kit Poster technology was turned into a book format like this one seen here, It would be a new fun way for every one to learn. Starting from a very young age, our children would learn to love reading.