Introduction
This review will focus on using the Wii controller (or better known as the Wiimote) to have a quick and simple interactive whiteboard for a computer. A whiteboard system, for those of you that don't know, enables the user to control the pointer on your computer desktop by simply moving around a special pen on the screens surface, or if required in mid air.
This system has been around for a while, often the hardware used to create the whiteboard would cost hundreds of dollars. Thankfully, very recently a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University has come up with a cheap and reliable system to solve the money problem. This great man is called Johnny Chung Lee. He is quite famous now for developing programs for the Wiimote. Another program he has created is Head Tracking, which allows the user to view the image on screen in such a way that it appears to be 3d. This innovative feature is a huge jump forward for the gaming community.
But enough about him, lets take a look at the technology behind the new Interactive Whiteboard.
The Technology
Inside the Wiimote there is a infrared (IR) camera, this camera can pick up sources of IR light. So if someone were to point the Wiimote at incandescent bulbs, candles or even the sun then the camera can see these sources of light. Pointing the Wiimote at a fluorescent light will have no effect because they emit little to no IR light at all. So how does the Wii know where you are pointing the controller. Well on top or below your television there is a sensor bar. This bar has 5 IR LED's on each side, the camera can see the IR light and sends the information back to the Wii about where they are.
With the Interactive Whiteboard, there is no Wii or sensor bar required, only a Wiimote, laptop or desktop computer with Bluetooth technology and one single IR LED.
Thankfully Wii decided to use Bluetooth technology which allows the Wiimote to be wireless. Having it Bluetooth means that anyone can connect the Wiimote to their computer.
Once the controller is connected, you can use Johnny's program configure the Wiimote into becoming the mouse. To get the Wiimote actually moving the pointer around on screen you need a IR LED. The process is to point the Wiimote at the screen (or where ever you like really) and turn the Whiteboard program on. Using the IR LED the user must specify where the edges of his screen are. The user does this by turning the LED on when he gets to each corner for a brief moment. Now that each corner is specified the program is fully set up and ready to go. It really is that easy. The user can now move the mouse around by waving the led across the screen or in mid air, depending on where you focused the IR camera in the Wiimote.
My review
To fully understand what this amazing piece of technology felt like, I just had to do it for myself. So, today I went down to Dicksmiths Electronics and bought myself a IR LED. I set up my recently bought Bluetooth dongle I got from Umart, and connected the Wiimote easily to my computer. Using the free to download software from Johnny Lee's website i loaded up the Whiteboard program. The configuration was quite simple, moving the LED to each corner of the screen then turning it on. And that was it, I had a fully functioning Interactive Whiteboard. I was surprised at how well it worked, considering the LED I got from Dicksmiths wasn't that powerful, and I was running it with a very small battery too. To test it out I opened up Photoshop to try and draw some stuff, the word 'hello' and smiley faces were the most common input.
To try something different, and slightly more futuristic I turned the Wiimote around, facing towards me. I re-configured the Whiteboard system to recognise the new edges of my 'mid-air' screen. This turned out to be not a wise move, I discovered it is slightly hard to remember where your edges are. This means you have to guess where you are pointing, which did result in a few mishaps. Doing it this way means you can not properly navigate your window, because the pointer only moves on screen when the LED light is on, but when its on, the left mouse button is being held down. Not Good. Moving it across screen pretty much selected all of my icons, and If I happened to click on an icon it would drag it across the screen. The only program that this method was alright in was Photoshop, but only if I wanted to draw a continues line with out letting go.
A solution to this probably about not knowing where the mouse is going to be, would be to have a large picture frame in front of the user. This frame would act as a guide to help the user know where the bounds he set at the beginning are. Also a slightly more high Tech solution would be to, using code, enable the program to not hold down the left mouse button when one LED is in view. Only enable the left click when a second IR LED comes into view of the Wiimotes camera. Other possibility arise with this solution as the Wiimote is able to pick up up four IR lights at the same time.
This reversed Wiimote method was actually quite tiring as you had nothing to lean on, and your hand is up in the air waving around.
Usefulness
The Interactive Whiteboard would extremely useful for teachers in front of a class or students in a studio based session. They could use it as a digital whiteboard, perhaps using photoshop as a drawing program, or even MS Paint to convey information to each other.
Overall the Interactive Whiteboard using the Wiimote is a cheap and easy to use system that can be set up by anyone, and It was certainly an enjoyable experience.
Links
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/People/johnny/projects/wii/
http://graphics.cis.udel.edu/classoffuture/index.html
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IENV3000 – Studio II Physical Computing
Christopher Douglas Wilson -- s4121621
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