Wii Remote Multi-Touch Whiteboard: Parts Ordered

• November
• 23

2:43 pm Smartboards

After a bit of my own research and reading over some great info supplied by the five STJA students working on the project, I went head and ordered enough equipment to construct two Wii remote multi-touch whiteboards. Yay.

2 Wii Remotes: These items are rather key. ($39.98 each from antonline.com)

Nyko Wii Remote Charing Station: We’re going to be using these pretty much all day every day, so a quick and easy recharging method seemed useful. ($26.53 from antonline.com)

AZiO BTD603-132 USB 2.0 Bluetooth Adapter: The Wii remotes will be connected to each computer via bluetooth and not every school computer has built in bluetooth. ($14.99 each from NewEgg.com)

4 Penteractive IR LED pens: Yes, it certainly would have been possible to construct our own IR LED pens. There is certainly enough information out there on how to do it. After watching a bunch of videos and reading through several how-to’s, it because clear that constructing the pen can be a pain and the casing isn’t always too sexy. So, I searched around and found someone making exactly what we need for $8 each. Nice. Sometime down the road we may construct our own IR LED pens (maybe when we need LOTS of them), but for now these should be perfect. ($8.00 each from penteractive.us)

2 Gorillapod Original Tripods: We need an easy way to stabilize each Wii remote. It would also be helpful if the stand could be used on uneven surfaces or be attached to a pole or cieling mounts. I’ve used these stands for my cameras for the past couple years and they work really, really well. I also picked up an extra attachment pack that we can use to attach to the Wii remotes without needing screws ($24.95 each from Joby.com)

After all shipping and taxes the total price came to $254.67 for two complete setups.

That means each setup cost $127.34. Now that’s what I call an inexpensive multi-touch whiteboard :)

I also did some poking around for software options. I know Johnny Lee has his own package, but it seemed logical that there would be others out there. It turns out that I was right and that a cross-platform amped-up program has been written.

All of the parts should arrive by early next week. I can’t wait to get everything assembled.

The assembly party has ben set for Tuesday, 12/2 from 3:30 to 4:30 in SV21. Anyone is welcome to drop by and help out.

In the future we should be able to put together everything we need for under $75 by making our own IR LED pens, building out own Wii remote mounts, and not having to buy another Wii remote charging station (The Wii remotes should need recharging so infrequently that we should need no more than one recharging station per 25(?) Wii remotes.) We’d also get to dodge the $14.99 USB bluetooth receivers if we made sure every classroom computer we buy has built in bluetooth.

The point is that we can certainly shave down the cost of each setup. And that’s from starting at the low, low price of $127.34 per setup. Sweet.

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