Hello all,

I added this new section that will cover topics on the emerging trends on wireless solutions for things like blob detection and data storage.

One technology that is quickly growing is using a Wii remote sensor… mainly because of its low cost and accessibility.

I wanted to have an open discussion to the community to get your opinions on the sensor… and see what kinda ideas we have on how to closer merge these technologies with our existing tabletop input devices.

Obviously these techniques have benefits and problems. For example the air tracking (third video) lacks any sort of direct manipulation or tactile feedback.. while requiring gloves… let alone just looking uncomfortable. But really it should be possible to build a DI/FTIR horizontal solution that uses a remote to track fingers.. thus removing the need for gloves. As you can tell I’m not a fan of needing to wear something to allow tracking. Not very natural :P

Luckily David Wallin (a founder of NUI Group aka the renowned WhiteNoiz) got his hands on a Wii Remote (29-50 USD) and a bluetooth reciever (25 USD) and you can read some of his initial findings on his blog. One major issue he covered was the fact that a Wii Remote can only detect max 4 blobs. Also he mentions multiple remote support within Touchlib, which really got me thinking on ways we could integrate the remote on our concepts.

WiiFlash might be a good start for an AS3 project. It allows the wiimote to connect to Flash or any application that supports OSC/TUIO protocols. And in theory.. some of our existing apps should already work with their concepts.


Here are some of the better known examples, but there are a lot out there...

At Christmas I went out and also bought a Wiimote.
I wonder if these are now out selling the consoles themselves

I have been playing with the Wiimote drums and WiiEarth and was planning on getting more into the MT uses of the remote.

At the moment you can only (apparently) track 4 IR points per remote, which means that you are limited in the amount of people and gestures. I guess for most people this will not be an issue, unless you are doing a 30ft MT wall

As for something like head or face tracking without a headset, this will have to be done on a traditional webcam, as you can’t gain access to the wiimote sensor image (as far as I know) and even if you could I guess it will be only seeing IR light.

Another advantage of combining the Wiimote with a normal cam is that it will be able to see colours e.g. a green square will behave different to a red one etc..

Looks smooth. I’ve never seen the last vid but I guess it works about the same as the Wii remote. I doubt if it’s going to be really practical though, becouse you’re still pointing in ‘nowhere’ with your fingers, instead of right at the spot where you can see the reaction to your movements. This makes it more complicated to controll in my opinion.

Thanks for adding a new forum btw.

Hi,
If we replace Camera IR by Multi-point Interactive Whiteboards with a Wiimote, can we get the same result ? (I haven’t a Wiimote to try it).

Regards.

I like the concept of ducking. Due to this method of ‘any IR’ light setting the wii remote off, it is unfortunately stuck to one person use :( still cool though
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/Jd3-eiid-Uw&rel=1[/youtube]

i saw a wii application looks like multitouch, called twiidee. Guys used Papervision and WiiFlash (which is a fucking great framework for using wiimote) to build an adobe air application in which u can manipulate 3D models. It has been made for colleges and high schools, to have a better view of some mecha models or medical organs. The exhibition video presents a piece of bone ! They say that it looks like multitouch and very easy to use because of the wiimote/nunchuck combo which is very intuitive

have a look : http://www.lafabrick.com/blog/index.php/2008/02/07/382-wiiflash-l-universit-acte-2

A friend and I set up a wiimote so you could use your regular computer screen as a touch screen.  The only downside is that you had to have an IR pen and you have to download a program so you could adjust the settings for where the computer will recognized where the screen is touched.  We got past that by just making some.  We went down to our local radioshack and bought a couple of IR leds, a couple of 9V battery holders, and a couple I/O switches.  took a pen apart attached the IR led, the 9V battery holders, and the I/O switch, then hot glued it together.  Sure they didn’t look very nice, but they still worked.  After those were built we connected the wiimote to the computer by using the bluetooth connection.  We at first pointed the one wiimote at the screen, and that worked ok but it could only see about three fourths of the screen.  After a while my friend suggested that we use too wiimotes one on each side of the computer.  That worked out, the wiimotes could see the whole screen.

The IR pen worked just like a mouse.  We discontinued this project when we found this site, so we could make a MT board.  I still would like to look further into the capabilities of this project, but it will be a while till I perfect my MT board and finish paying for the parts of the computer I am building to connect it to.

johnny lee work ?

has anyone considered bouncing ir light off the surface to hit the finger tips and picking it up on the remote in some fashion?

unfortunately having the hardware locked is a bit of a pain...nintendo is looking at a whole other audience here if they unlocked some of their stuff. i for one would like more channels on my wii, preferably silly flash & java games...i guess they fear emulation would strain their wiiware section.

Im out of town and cant get to my wii right now, but would it make sense to use the wii calibration screen
to have a point of visual reference that you can use to correctly position or aim the wiimote at the FTIR/DI
screen so to utilize 100% of the sensors FOV ?  Then shut off the wii and re-connect the bluetooth link with the pc

Should get a chance to check it out this evening. will post results

Heres another wii-mote Jonny Lee program implementation I like to call Touch-Pen: itunes and artrage

yeah

well i have a mac and is easy to conect with the wiimote

and play games how plasma pong and more games

is very crazy the things u can do with a mac and thats the way i want software for mac :’(

ok see ya!

I already have testing the IR rebound and the wiimote like jhonny lee but you have to be carfuly with your hand, when I do it that’s funny but not realy pratical.

go here for other cool stuff:http://www.djwiij.com/page.php?14

I just bought a wiimote to suit with my USB bluetooth adaptor (Belkin F8T016). I’m using Windows Vista 64, I’ve got no problem with the adaptor with the software include in vista, it well recognize the wiimote (Nintendo RVL-CNT-01).
I use “WiiSmoothBoard” software to drive my cursor :

It works very well but my problem is that if I reboot my computer, turn it into sleep, remove the battery of the wiimote or just wait a few minutes the wiimote stop working. It is always display in my bluetooth devices but then if I run WiiSmoothboard, WiiPresenter or some others software like this, I have a popup saying that no wiimote were found.
The only solution that I found is to delete the wiimote from my device and to add it again. As you can imagine it’s not very great.
Do someone here have a solution for this ?

I have tried to push the Sync button of the wiimote, tried to install bluesoleil (for vista 64) but it doesn’t recognize my bluetooth adaptor.