I was trolling the comments on Slashdot yesterday for something interesting and found a link to Johnny Lee’s project page. I watched the video for the interactive whiteboard and was totally blown-away!
The project connected a Nintendo Wii Remote to a computer via Bluetooth. The IR camera in the Wiimote sensed an infrared LED at the end of a pen and its relative position to the screen.
The most difficult part about this project was building the light pen. It consists of one infrared LED, a momentary switch, an N cell battery and some wires. I thought an EXPO dry-erase marker shell would be perfect for the task of containing it all. It has a form factor that everyone who has ever used a whiteboard has gotten accustomed to.
Through several instances of trial and error, I finally got the light pen working with the Wiimote. Since the LED emits light in the infrared spectrum, I had no way of really knowing if it was working or not. That made troubleshooting very difficult. And with everything being soldered together in such a small package, troubleshooting was also very time-consuming.
After I got it working, I turned my old notebook into a touch screen. I was able to interact with the screen more naturally than with a mouse. I could play solitaire as fast as I could think.
“How is this something beyond just a toy?”, you might be asking yourself. The school where I am currently employed is thinking about spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000 of my tax money on Smartboards from 3M. I just want to provide them with a solution that would be less expensive and annoying than the 3M solution.
For those of you who want to see this thing in action, here’s the video. Sorry for the crappy WMV quality. Had to shrink it somehow. Enjoy!
