wii smartboard

It seems that the greatest flaw and the great strength of youth are the same things. We are terribly impatient. Instead of waiting for my IR pens to arrive in the mail, I drove out to visit the good folks at Radio Shack. For $1.99, I bought an IR LED bulb and bought a spool of wire for $5.

The pen itself is a simple device. I just pulled out the insides of a standard ballpoint pen and carved a notch hole on the side of the casing. Two long wires were attached to the two leads of the bulb and they were threaded into the hallow shaft and out of the hole I cut in the side. Then I just attached a regular AA battery to the side with electrical tape and rigged it so I could just press the exposed wire against the exposed end of the battery to complete the circuit. At Radio Shack, I was eyeing the switches and buttons, and I should have just bought them. Curses for not listening to that little voice!


I first started with one wii remote, but I eventually moved on to 2 since it provides much more sensitivity smother movements. The wiimote is special because it contains all of the basic components that make a smartboard so darn smart: an IR sensor and a bluetooth connectivity system. Yep, those suckers at Nintendo didn't know they were actually helping teachers everywhere get around a very expensive roadblock. The actual mechanics of it are complicated, but the gist is simple. The wiimotes act as infrared cameras that are able to detect an infrared signal. With the wiimotes synced to your computer through bluetooth, they can then relay the signal about where the IR signal is coming from.


With 2 wiimotes, I'm better able to detect an IR signal in 3D space since the the two wiimotes have overlapping fields of vision.


I downloaded a program called wiimotewhiteboard, which does the rest for you.

Currently, I've tested it on my laptop's LCD screen, and I've tested on a data projector. For now, I'm just messing around with the arrangements of the wiimotes and figuring out what positions get the best image tracking.

This makes powerpoints way cooler 'cause now I can draw straight on the slides while I present. I can underline things or circle them. I can draw diagrams in the rooms where I don't have chalkboard space. This pretty much makes those silly things useless because I can draw my diagrams, save them, delete them, or do whatever with them.

Horray for technology! Leave comments if you have questions.