This post renders the one below out of date, and in effect, a rubbish method to go about turning your projector setup into an interactive whiteboard.

My new setup uses… the Wii remote (which is Wiimote if your not in Europe)! So here’s how it works, the Wii remote is next to my projector, and is connected to a computer via bluetooth (if you want to connect yours, enable bluetooth on your computer, press the red button on the back of the Wii remote, and search for devices on your computer – the Toshiba bluetooth stack seems to work well for me). I then run software called Smoothboard (www.smoothboard.net) that turns the Wii’s IR camera into a HID (human interface device). This then means that I can use my IR pen (from www.irpens.co.uk) to control my computer – and can I just say this creates an AMAZING interactive whiteboard experience. Once it’s all connected, I do a 4 point touch calibration to map the corners of the screen to the IR camera so it can respond correctly to wherever I place my pen. It’s just as good as most commercial ones, and costs a LOT LESS. It’s also surfaceless in the sense that I can take my netbook, projector, and Wii remote anywhere with me and set up an interactive whiteboard – at home now it projects simply onto a wall.

The software Smoothboard is good. So is Johnny Lee’s Wiimote application, the original developer of the Wiimote project. However both of these lack any drawing programs – and Microsoft Paint fails for this type of task. Never the less I did write my own program, which is extremely basic at the moment, so its not worth publicizing, however I might in the future. I called it WiiDrawPC. A program you might like to try is Linktivity Presenter which is also good, as it lets you annotate your screen. Ideally I’d like a free suite of software similar to Promethean’s ActivStudio, which we use on the majority of whiteboards at school, but thats only for their hardware.

Overall I have an extremely functional interactive whiteboard. One small problem; the board is too big for me – I’m about an average height for a 15 year old, but I have to stand on a chair to 1) complete the 4 point touch calibration and 2) interact any higher than half way up the screen, lol.

UPDATE: Here’s the video I said I’d do.

There are loads more on YouTube, including a number of insanely crappy setups whereby they use a monitor instead of a projector, which = fail, however enjoy my real setup!

If you’re in high school education, there’s a good chance that your school uses ‘interactive whiteboards’, the surface that the computer image is projected onto then you can use a pen to play word matching up games or draw pictures, in effect control the computer.

Considering I have a projector, I have always been fond of this idea, however I don’t have the money to install a proper interactive whiteboard, and even if I did save up it’d be a bit pointless, it’d be for show more than actual use, once the ‘coolness‘ had worn off. This led me on to think “can I have an interactive whiteboard without the surface?”, of course I did some research, and came across eBeam Projection – which, yeah, it looks cool, but it’s also expensive. I then thought “can I make my own interactive whiteboard?”…

The answer is, yes I can! (and of course I have). I’m writing this less than 24 hours into the project, so at the moment my interactive board isn’t as good as one of the commercial ones. Nevertheless, it works! Let me explain how it works; my Optoma EP721 DLP projector has a Logitech EyeToy webcam next to it, these are both connected to a computer. I then have a program that detects light objects and can manipulate the location of these into mouse movements, therefore allowing me to shine a laser beam at the board and that be reflected in the movement of the mouse pointer. I can also use a torch as a pen against the wall to move the mouse. Two issues I have with this; number one is that the webcam is too far back and picks up more than just the projected image (and I can’t move it forward because it’ll interfere with the projected image and theres nowhere to mount it) rendering it out of calibration, a theoretical workaround for this is to have a piece of software to zoom in so it picks up only the projected image then relay the zoomed image to the light detection application – I say theoretical because it didn’t work when I tried it, which leads me on to the next issue. It only works on black, in respect to the first issue, it thinks the mouse pointer is a light object and creates a movement loop only ending up in the mouse ending in a corner. Any other colour, such as the desktop, also doesn’t work because the program cannot distinguish between the desktop image and the laser dot or torch light – so because of this I’ve wrote two programs (sorry, I’m not releasing them), one called “The Green Dot” (see video below) and another called “Flipchart”, the former basically being a dot that moves around the screen controlled by the mouse and the latter a simple drawing program, but you don’t have to click to draw, so you just point the laser at the board and it draws, but of course as I mentioned calibration needs some work so its not excellent.

Here’s a video I uploaded to YouTube demonstrating “The Green Dot”.

That’s all for now!