MAD Boxes: A Plug-And-Play Tiled Display Wall

Abstract

While interest in large displays is growing rapidly, they are still not common-place. Significant technical knowledge is required to construct and maintain current display wall systems. Our goal is to make large tiled-projector displays essentially plug and play . We want a design that can be incrementally expanded and reconfigured at will. We want a software environment that is identical to a standard desktop computer, with no need for rendering clusters and special libraries. We have designed a display wall solution that meets our needs. With our Modular Ambient Display (MAD) boxes, a variety of high-resolution large display configurations can be quickly assembled. By integrating interaction hardware into each box, we have created a stand-alone interactive large display component. Our system permits experimentation not only with the wall software, but the physical wall configuration as well.