Slamtec RPLiDAR in TouchDesigner

Turn any surface into an interactive multi-touch surface using a Slamtec RPLiDAR A1M8 sensor. This LiDAR sensor is one of the cheapest models out there but still provides a reasonable refresh rate and can create some stunning interactions.

In this video I will go over unboxing and wiring of the Slamtec lidar sensor, use an existing github repo to build our own C++ plugin to read the lidar data, and then visualize / process that data and incorporate into a simple interactive scene.

There are a lot of random resources out there so I hope this video condenses a lot of that into one place and fills in some of the blanks.

Project files (include a fully built .dll file you should be able to drop right into Touch): www.patreon.com/water__shed

Thanks to Kai Curtis for the github repo: https://github.com/thepelkus-too/Slam...

Other links:
Lidar Sensor: https://www.amazon.com/Slamtec-RPLIDA...
VS Code: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/do...
Silicon Labs CP210x USB to UART Bridge Driver: https://www.silabs.com/developers/usb...

00:00 - Start
00:27 - Slamtec RPLIDAR A1M8
01:34 - Unboxing our LiDAR Sensor
04:17 - Wiring up the LiDAR
08:01 - Getting LiDAR Data into TouchDesigner using CPlusPlus CHOP
11:43 - Building the C++ Plugin with VS Code and Prereqs
19:44 - Loading the .dll plugin as CPlusPlus CHOP in TouchDesigner
23:34 - Visualizing Slamtec LiDAR Data in TouchDesigner
30:12 - Simple Example: Turn your desktop into a touchscreen!