Thursday 31 January 2008

An interactive whiteboard for under £50 using a Wiimote Part 3

In the Wiimote part 2 I explained how I had got the Wiimote to pair up with the Bluetooth on the PC to the extent that I could run the interactive whiteboard software.

Last weekend I made an Infra Red Pen.

Here is a video to explain how to do it yourself.

Apologies for the poor quality of the still pictures, I will make an improved one later on

Knowledge is for sharing

Wednesday 30 January 2008

Storing files and Moore's Law

Each year for the past few years I have bought a USB Flash memory stick.

I started off with a 512MB memory stick back in January 2005 and it cost me about £15. Likewise a year later in Jan 2006 I went back to the same discounted store and bought a 1GB stick for about £15.

In 2007 a 2GB stick was £15 and low an behold this year 2008 I can get a 4GB stick for £14.86 at the time of writing.

One might be forgiven for thinking that technology is improving at the rate of double a year.

Moore's Law (Gordon Moore Intel co-founder) stated that processor capability or chip density would double every 18 months in an article back in 1965

The link is to a recent article in the Institution of Engineering and Technology Magazine Jan 26th 2008 edition.

A summary of how technology has managed to roughly follow Moore's Law:

1) Up until the late 90s chip manufacturers were able to increase the die size or the area of the chip. However, there came a point when the yield (number of good chips on the die) became poor and unviable.

2) The next stage in the story is that chip manufacturers increased the number of layers in a chip with up to 12 layers planned by 2010. This required innovation in chip (CMOS) manufacturing process.

So back to the USB memory doubling every year, well that might be down to price erosion by volume production coupled with the 18 month doubling in capacity.

They key thing for me though is that I did not buy the 4GB USB drive this year.

The original reason to use a USB memory stick was that I could take files with me wherever I went and work on any PC save my work and take it away with me.

Over the past year I have started to use online (free) memory to save files and pictures using the likes of Google Docs (1000 docs), Windows SkyDrive (1GB) Live (500 photos in any 30 day period), Flickr (200 free photos) YouTube (Videos).

I was a little reluctant to do this initially, but I guessed that particularly with the larger players (Google, Yahoo and Windows) that I am not likely to loose my stuff and I reckoned on backing it up onto an external harddrive at home.

As more and more players offer free memory space then I return to the situation with memory and its cost/price erosion to the point that companies feel they can offer free space in quite large volume. And/or maybe its reached the point where these companies feel that they have to offer to get the punters to sign up. BUT this is probably Hard disk memory not Flash

Following on from this the comparison between Flash memory (USB drives) and Hard drive memory came to mind. I can now get a 500GB external HDD for about £75 (probably cheaper if I search more deeply)

With Flash memory 1GB roughly £4, HDD 1GB at £0.15, there is a significant difference.

However, with the advent of online memory coupled with the external HDD, a new line of products starts to look very attractive

The Asus Eee PC and the Apple MacBook Air. Both of these products use Flash memory instead of a standard hard disk.

Why? When I have just pointed out such a big cost difference between Flash and HDD memory.

Well the HDD is the weak link in the laptop particularly because it is prone to being damaged if subjected to any force

The HDD is also heavy, bulky and juicy. Using Flash instead of standard HDD contributes to a light, thin, economic more reliable and more robust product.

So the idea of an Asus Eee with an 8GB Flash HDD sounds odd, but actually its just right for today. It's light to carry, more reliable and the battery SHOULD last longer.

I would use it to work on line, saving my work on line and every now and then, maybe when I am back at home I back up my on line stuff onto my USB external 500GB HDD.

My reason for writing about this is really a reflection about how I am changing the way I operate the way I use a PC, the internet, and file storage

The fact that I cannot get an 8GB Asus Eee for love nor money is neither here nor there really.

Friday 25 January 2008

An interactive whiteboard for under £50 using a Wiimote Part 2

A week on from my first post, I have made some progress working in my spare time.

Chris Hall bought the Wiimote from Argos

The Bluetooth USB adaptor from CPC/Farnell also arrived on Wednesday.

My first task was to get the wiimote paired with the bluetooth adaptor

1. Installing the bluetooth sofware:

My Bluetooth Places

So far so good no problems with this, just insert the CD and install

2. Getting the bluetooth software to find the Wiimote

Wiimote found by bluetooth

This was also quite straightforward

3. Pairing the Wiimote with the bluetooth software

Bluetooth pairing

This caused a few headaches. There is no security code so you just click 'skip' and it should move to the next step.

However, the key to getting past this stage is to hold down keys 1 and 2 on the Wiimote continuously while clicking the 'skip' key.

This is not immediately apparent as once you have pressed keys 1 and 2 on the Wiimote the 4 blue LEDS remain lit for quite a while, so you think that it is communicating as it should.

4. Wiimote is paired

Wiimote paired

5. The next step is to get the interactive whiteboard software running. Having downloaded it from Johhny Chung's website (see first post) you need to read the 'Read me first'. Here it tells you that you need Microsoft (dot)Net 2.0.

You then need to make sure that the software is loaded from the archive root

Wiimote whiteboard software

6. Click on the Whiteboard exe file and you should get the calibration box. There are some help boxes if you have done something wrong.

Wiimote Calibration

7. Click on the calibration button and you get the calibration page

Wiimote calibration page

OK...so I have not make the IR pens yet, job for this weekend

BUT...I did bring in an old TV remote control just to check that something happened and hey presto it worked. I could not do anything because the TV remote outputs an IR code so the calibration does not work properly, but the test was good enough for me to move forward.

Can't wait for the next gripping installment eh?

Friday 18 January 2008

An interactive whiteboard for under £50 using a Wiimote

The Wiimote is quite interesting in that it has an infrared sensor that is more than just a receiver like those on your TV. I have not looked too much into the detail but I have not seen anything like this before

Nintendo augmented the remote with an infrared image sensor on the front designed to locate two IR beacons within the controller's field of view.

These two sources of IR light are tracked by a sensor in the front of the Wiimote housing. By tracking the locations of these two points in the sensors 2D field of view, the system can derive more accurate pointing information.

More information can be found here

We thought we would have a go at making an interactive whiteboard ourselves.

If you're interested here are the steps to hopefully bring success:

1. The video showing how it works

2. How to make an IR pen

3. List of working bluetooth adaptors

4. List of parts from Farnell (Could not find what I wanted at Maplin)

5. A Wiimote from Argos

I'll blog about how we get on in time

If anyone in the UK has made one I'd be interested to know how you got on