BlogDale

This week I have been playing with my Wii. Following Johnny Chung Lee’s posts about his research into using Wiimotes and an IR pen to create an interactive whiteboard (for less than £50), and Doug Belshaw actually doing it, I’ve mashed up a complete solution that is cheap and convenient.

Interactive whiteboards are like marmite. People either love ‘em or hate ‘em. I know people who believe strongly that the IWB is an expensive luxury in a classroom and that the same learning gains can generally be met using just a projector; conversely I’ve spoken with teachers who believe strongly that the interactive aspect of the board is what makes it useful, and they now wouldn’t be without the IWB. Interestingly, these two poles of opinion were found to be split generally between phases, where primary teachers wouldn’t part with their boards but secondaries were indifferent to them. My own observation was that whereas a huge investment was made in putting IWBs in classrooms, less importance was placed on training teachers how to use them. And so they sat on the wall as an expensive ornament for months until somebody went on a course and found what “other people” were doing with them.

To me, the biggest impact of a school’s investment in IWBs lies not in the whizzy resources that they produce for their own particular brand of IWB with its proprietary software. The biggest impact is to get teachers to use ICT to prepare and deliver rich content that is pertinent and relevant to learning objectives, and the rest will follow. As suggested here, the initial use of an IWB is simply to use it as a data projector and not to exploit the features of the interactive board itself. Surely that represents a wasted investment? Couldn’t we have bought two projectors rather than a projector and board? Yes we could. We should. And now there’s a way to dispense with the expensive board altogether, or at least see if your teaching style needs the features that a board has to offer.

Here’s how I did it…

Making this piece of kit is easy. The return on investment is huge. It will cost about £30 for a wiimote and less than £1.50 for an IR pen. Software to get everything talking together is free. A bluetooth dongle costs between £6 and £20.
Here’s how to do it.

It was a short while ago that Johnny Chung Lee’s research on the use of Nintendo Wiimotes to create an interactive whiteboard caught my eye. While I’m fairly disinterested personally by the Wii itself for playing games or getting fit with (I bet my kids would love it though), repurposing hardware or software for learning gains really grabs my attention. When I first read about it, it seemed too good to be true and I didn’t have a wiimote to play experiment with anyway; but I longed for the available time to try this out. Doug Belshaw beat me to the crunch by a couple of days and proved that this really could work, which gave me heart to try it. Eventually I borrowed a Wiimote from the PE dept at school (thanks to Mr White) and badgered Mr Walker for some electronics bits and with other items less pressing in the week before the holidays I tried it out.

It seems that all you need is the right interface software (for Mac or for PC), a bluetooth connection, a wiimote, an infra-red pen and away you go - instant interactive whiteboard.

The hard bit is was making the infra-red pen. (but it’s not any more)

Pen Mk 1 was a real steampunk affair, made at school by a year 10 pupil, Jack Shuker. We raided the DT stock of infra-red LEDs (total 1) and butchered re-engineered a Berol Dry-Wipe marker. With wires hanging everywhere (for easy testing access on this prototype, you understand) it was a geek’s dream. It proved the concept and impressed those who saw it in action, so job done. (Hint: When testing the LED works, point a digital camera at the LED - IR shows up on digital cameras and webcams)

Pen Mk 2 is a more refined affair. Using another make of dry-wipe marker I cut the top off and did some more careful soldering of a push-to-make switch to an IR LED and a battery. An AAA battery case fits inside the pen really snugly, as if it’s meant to be there. [O frabjous day! I found that Maplins have opened a shop just two weeks ago in my local town; I sense the re-emergence of an earlier interest in hobby electronics.] I was pleased with the result but to get it just right took me ages . Making pens this way is really labour-intensive and I can’t see it taking off. The advantage is that it looks like a pen and teachers won’t have to venture too far outside their comfort zone to use it.

Pen Mk 3 is a lot more satisfying. Despite having invested a small fortune in electronics gear to make these pens, today I found one of those little LED torches in a local hardware shop - £0.99 for two, so I took a chance. The extravagance. Inside the torch is simple two batteries and a LED with an insulation sheath that keeps the contact away from the battery until you squeeze. No soldering, no wires, just the LED and the batteries. With the blue-light LED replaced with an infra-red LED, it worked straight away (but be sure to get the polarity of the LED correct - negative side of the battery goes to the short leg, the one with a flat on the LED casing). It had taken me about 30 seconds to manufacture and it works a treat. Problem solved.

Software

To get the Wiimote talking to your machine you’ll need a bluetooth connection. If you have no internal bluetooth on your computer you’ll need a hardware dongle. On the PC I used the Blue Soleil bluetooth software successfully to get the devices talking to each other although on one laptop it kept crashing. I’m not sure whether the natively installed bluetooth drivers would work; something to try next week. I bet they will, so there would be no real need for the Blue Soleil stuff.

For PC, get Johnny Lee’s Wiimote whiteboard software and install it. Mac users have a choice; either Wiimote Whiteboard or Darwiin Remote. I’ve not tried it on Linux yet but I understand that the Java version of Wiimote Whiteboard ought to work.

With Wiimote Whiteboard installed, get the Wii and the computer talking to each other via bluetooth by pressing the 1 and 2 buttons together on the Wiimote. Once they have started communicating you have to calibrate the screen using the IR pen. The pen then acts as a mouse when you push the button to turn it on.

Using Darwiin is interesting too. It does the same sorts of thing as the above but additionally it reads the motion sensor in the Wiimote. This means that you can direct the cursor without using the IR Pen. And you can program the buttons to do what you want…this could be really exciting. I can’t wait to project this up somewhere huge and let some artists loose with a painting program. Here’s what my daughter produced just using the wiimote to control the cursor.

If you want notebook software, similar to M$ OneNote but for free, take a look at Jarnal . ‘Course, now your IR pen works like a mouse you could use anything I suppose…

Here’s my photoset of the Wiimote Whiteboard so far. I’ll try to get how-to movies done of the software configs.

Parts List

Wiimote £29.99 from Toys R Us (you may find cheaper)

Infra-red LED YH70M from Maplin (p744 in the catalogue)

LED torch £0.99 for two, including batteries.

Bluetooth dongle £7.99 on offer at Maplins

Wiimote whiteboard software for Mac or PC

Darwiin Remote for Mac

Jarnal pen-based journalling software.

More wiimote joy that I need to blog:

Control MIDI with wiimote

Remote Buddy