DIY Tagtool

New Tagtool “All in One” by Stuart Childs, Leeds, UK.

With some laser cutting design + help from my friend Aaron, I have built this Tagtool all in one flight case. Based on instructions from the Tagtool website I wanted to make a hardy tool for large scale projection use. Including a Wacom Intuos 4 graphics tablet, this tool can be plugged into a projector to enable artists to draw on anything they want.

This is the third Tagtool system I have built – previous incarnations have been standalone circuitry that can be plugged into a PC along with a graphics tablet – this time I wanted to build one big box that housed everything.

There is a fairly beastly PC inside running Windows XP and OMA’s open source Nodekit software that connects the graphics tablet, a playstation style gamepad and an Arduino board together to make it all work.

I wanted to keep the flight case as intact as possible to keep it nice and strong. I ended up only drilling two holes in it to mount the monitor arm stand. I will be using this Tagtool for projections, drawing events and outdoor virtual graffiti activities with The Jam Jar Collective. We first tested it out with a group of children in Whitehaven and they seemed to really get into being able to draw on the side of their Civic Hall building.

Hardware used:

1 ex-US Army flight case
3mm laser cut MDF top plate
25mm x 25mm interior wood skeleton
lots of M5 nuts + bolts

Arduino Duemilanove
100mm Panasonic 10k slider potentiometers
One big red button that I found in a junk yard in Portugal with a push to make switch underneath

an old USB keyboard that I stripped out of it’s nasty plastic case
IEC power socket, VGA socket and USB extension ports on the top plate
An old hacked-up Dell case to hold the PC components

Two 80mm computer case fans – one in, one out for cooling

PC specs:

CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 555 Dual Core 3.2GHz
RAM: 4g DDR3

Graphics card: GeForce GT220 with 1g onboard RAM
Hard drive: 128g Kingston SSDNow SATA

400w PSU