Components Overview

As shown on Figure 4. The DataTiles system is composed of two main kinds of elements.

The Tray is a flat panel screen. Placed horizontally, it offers both an information display and a support surface for the tokens (tiles). The board is split into 12 regions of the size of a tile. Each of the square area is equipped with an RFID sensor coil (antenna). Additionally, the tray is enhanced with an electromagnetic pen tablet. Furthermore, the system can be composed of various trays. Indeed, solutions for inter-trays communication were also developed by Rekimoto, Ullmer and Oba.

The Tiles are (partially) transparent acrylic tokens. Each tile embedded an RFID tag. Similarly to the ``silicon serial numbers'' of the logjam system or the ``iButtons'' or the mediaBlocks project, the tag enclose a unique identifier. This latter fact permits the RFID sensors placed on the tray to identify the tiles. However, in contrary to [3,19] the identification scheme is contact-less. We shall later (see 4) emphasize how this fact is important in regards to ergonomics and ease of use.