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I needed to get a fresh set of
eyes on board to see if there was something I was missing from an electronics
standpoint, in completing this project.
If I had the time to wait for something other than a Do-It-Yourself IR
LED device, I would have been more confident.
Workbench Creations to the Rescue
I asked CR4 Blogger Frankd20,
owner of the Workbench
Creations Blog to help me troubleshoot.
He is an avid DIYer (maybe even addicted), so
I knew he could look at my wiring and let me know if that was the real problem.
 We moved the Wiimote
around, experimenting with its position and managed to get calibration
efficiency (CE) up to 32% (and then 28% after I got excited and moved the
screen, throwing off the original CE).
After he turned his keen eye at it and checked Johnny Lee's video, the
answer was clear – my LED design was the culprit.
The bracket holding the bulb and the square front of the box
blocked too much IR light to get a higher CE.
He suggested creating a pen by finding an LED flashlight at Wal-Mart and
switching the bulb with the IR bulb I already had. It would increase the visibility of the bulb
and fix calibration issues.
Left to My Own Devices
With 48 hours left until the
deadline, I picked up an Energizer LED Penlight from Auto Parts America. The idea was to just swap out bulbs and see
what happened. It was an easy process. Take the pen apart, switch the light bulb
with the IR LED from the other device (which took just a little soldering), and
put it back together.
 Being
that I didn't have time to make a mistake, Frankd20 took care of business. Again, the major problem was that we couldn't
tell when the IR LED was on – so we didn't know if it worked. Noting that most cameras can see IR light, I
suggested we use the digital camera in my cell phone to look, and it indeed
worked.
A Smooth Move – Or Move to Smooth
This was it. We fired up the IR LED
and tried it out. Calibration efficiencey
(CE) jumped to an all-time high of 40%.
It was still choppy to use and didn't track well, so I decided to install
some updated software by programmer Boon Jin that I had found in my search on
the internet. His program,  Wiimote
Smoothboard 0.4.6 BETA, is much more advanced than Lee's original program and
is only his test run before he releases.
After some fiddling with the angle of the Wiimote, I was able to break
the 4-minute mile equivalent of Wiimoting: I had broken the 50% plane with a
55% CE!
I
was able to underline and circle items on PowerPoint, legibly write a
co-worker's name on Paint, and even advance PowerPoint slides just by clicking
the on/off button. There was some delay
in terms of tracking, and Frankd20 suggested that might be from too narrow of a
beam of light coming from the IR LED. He
recommended scuffing the exposed bulb with fine sandpaper. We also kicked around the idea that since I
was still working just with the laptop and not the projector yet, the bigger
screen might make tracking more stable.
The Verdict – Building It:
This was not hard to build. The most difficult part was the IR LED pen,
which I only had to build on my own (rather than ordering it) because of a
deadline. The online forums were helpful
and the programs were easy to use. This
is something that I could definitely replicate for about $75 (USD). I would recommend that anyone who is even
mildly computer inclined to give it a shot.
The wealth of online support provides enough information to get you
through it, and I learned a lot
in the process.
Check back one more time after I
give this a go with a projector in the classroom. I'll weigh in on whether or not it provided
enough of an added benefit to validate buying the parts, and building one on
your own.
Next (and Final) Wiimote Whiteboard Blog: The Classroom
Applicability/ Practicality Verdict
Resources:
http://www.boonjin.com/wp/2008/08/14/wiimote-smoothboard-045-beta
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5EvhHy7eQ
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Re: Wii Shall Overcome (Wii Whiteboard - Part 7)
