Friday, February 29, 2008

Wii Remote IR mouse

So I rigged up Johnny Lee's wii remote whiteboard at work much to the awe of all my co-workers. It's pretty amazing to see it in action with everything set up just right.



After everybody stood around and talked about it, my boss Ruben asked why he had to stand right at the board and touch it. I basically told him that was the idea behind a "touch-screen".
He said he'd rather have a pointer type mouse with click capability. He then basically described the same functionality as is used in the actual wii IR interface.

After perusing the internet for a bit and googling "Wii IR Mouse", i got nothing. A few posts about some tilt activated pointer stuff, but nothing i could really use.

Well, what Boss wants, Boss gets.
I cracked open the C# version of Johnny's whiteboard code and made some major mods to it. Using a single LED, (or a small array for long distance) i got a pretty sweet mouse simulation.
I mapped the A button to left click, B button to right click, and for ease of use, Minus is double click.
I would strongly recommend against this setup if you have parkinsons disease, however, as it takes some practice to get your hand steady. Otherwise you may be needing that new wii remote protector for when it goes flying across the room.

See 'er in action:




Showed it to "el Jefe", and he LIKEY.
Altho he immediately opened up power point and started using only the click functionality to scroll through slides....
Whatever, man.

I'll post the source and program later when i find somewhere to host it...

This is the Bluetooth adapter I use, note i did NOT use bluesoleil as the pack in software includes all the necessary drivers (under the bluesoleil branding i think)

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=150"