Thanks to Johnny Chung Lee, everyone and their mom seem to be setting up their own Wiimote whiteboards these days. I tried it too but disliked the pen-based interaction. So, I built a simple glove that allows you to pinch an object to drag and drop it somewhere. Here is what you need:
- IR LED in the 920 nm range (a bag of 20 cost me )
- 1.5V AA battery
- a glove
- battery holder (with optional velcro to fit it to the glove)
- some wires
- a Wiimote
- software (I tried Uwe Schmidt’s java based Mac version).
The first beta version looks like above after some soldering.
After calibration the precision is really good, even when using it in front of the small screen of my Macbook Pro. It worked very well for card sorting in the OptimalSort demo and it feels natural to pick up objects with your fingers instead of pushing a switch on a pen.
I am eager to try it with a projector but that will have to wait until tomorrow when I get back to work. It would also be nice to try the virtual scrum board that Jesper Rønn-Jensen and hos colleagues are working on. Updates will follow.