So you’ve designed and built your own IR pen! Where an earth do we go from here? Fret no more, all is explained.
Basically we are going to turn the PC into a Wii! Communication is the key. To do this the Wiimote needs to talk to the PC, so the first thing is to install some Bluetooth software that allows this event. The most popular and stable of them all is a piece of software called Blue Soleil.
After software installation a Bluetooth dongle is inserted into a spare USB port. The dongle needs to ‘find’ the Wiimote and register it. It’s very much like connecting two mobile phones together for photo transfer etc.
Before searching devices for bluetooth from the PC (Blue Soleil) firstly grab your Wiimote. Press both buttons 1 + 2 at the same time. You should see the blue lights on the Wiimote flashing. Directly after this, select find device from Blue Soleil and it will perform a search of Bluetooth enabled devices in the vicinity. The Wiimote will be detected and a nice green Nintendo joystick will be displayed on screen. Ok, we’ve now introduced the PC to the Wiimote.
Registering the USB dongle with the Wiimote
You can check within Windows how good the signal is by going into the control panel and clicking the Bluetooth icon.
Bluetooth signal strength
With the PC and Wiimote sharing the same room together they still haven’t a clue what they are saying to each other. Enter the ‘translator’, so to speak.
We take a trip and go see Johnny Chung Lee, the inspiration behind all this, Johnny has the software we need to complete the journey.
Have a good read of his website then proceed to the download area, look for Windows (32-bit) and click Wiimote Whiteboard v0.3
Wiimote whiteboard, the fun begins
Unzip the file and install. Run Wiimote whiteboard, make sure the Wiimote is on and connected first.
Time to calibrate. The window below displays how much battery is left. Tracking utilisation is an indication of how accurate the calibration process was carried out. The higher the number the more accurate the Wiimote will calculate the IR pen location.
Firstly, make sure the Wiimote is positioned as best as possible. It may require some tweaking but generally the Wiimote needs to be positioned above the shoulder (on the arm that you don’t use for writing. Eg. Left-Handed, place Wiimote above right shoulder).
The Wiimote has a field of view that shouldn’t become too restricted so some fine tuning of placement will be required. Remember that the Wiimote needs to pick up the IR emissions from the IR pen, but you’ll be surprised at how well it does this.
The calibration screen simply displays a red target area in each corner. Point and click on each target to complete calibration. Not happy with the tracking utilisation numbers? Re-position the Wiimote and try again. It may well be that the Wiimote will need to be attached to a prop of some kind for height, depending on your room furniture.
hit those targets!
Here is one of my pens in action! The little white dot on the screen is the IR reflecting off the monitor and picked up on the video camera.
