Johnny Lee Chung, a PhD student from the HCI Institute at Carnegie Mellon University
Read more about his cool projects, or check out his blog, Procrastineering.
The project I’m going to describe today is the Wii Desktop VR head tracking:
This project is so easy I’ve recommended it for my 10 year old brother. If anything does go wrong you’re only working with components that cost pennies, or at worst a couple of pounds.
Before I got started on the hardware side of things I thought it prudent to check that the software worked.
Then I installed <a href=”http://www.bluesoleil.com/download/index.asp?topic=bluesoleil5x”>Blue Soleil</a>
Install Blue Soleil by following this tutorial. I specifically installed Blue Soleil version 2.3 Standard Release 060728
[EDIT 10th June 2008: I had some problems with BlueTooth. My PC doesn't have it built in so I had to use a USB BT adapter. I installed Broadcom's btwinitialupdate.exe driver and now I have working BlueTooth again. I couldn't get this to work with BlueSoleil but did find a post that explains how to use your Wiimote without it. Basically My Bluetooth Places -> Add device. If you use Find Bluetooth Devices instead of Add then you won't be able to Skip the pairing, and so never connect the device]
Download Johnny’s code. I didn’t try to compile his code, I just ran the executable. What with the amount of Malware on Windows you’d be advised to compile it yourself from source otherwise you never really know what the executable’s doing.
The cheapest supplier of safety glasses with LEDs was Charlies Direct. Their delivery rate was the lowest too. The product I bought was the Rolson LED Glasses
Item Code: 138600
Price: £3.99
Shipping Charge: £4.95
Total Cost: £8.94
Rolson LED Lighted Glasses Stock No: 60397
I placed the order on Tuesay the 15th of January, and it was dispatched on Thursday the 17th of January. I kept an eye on the parcel tracking page that London CityLink offer, and they delivered my parcel on Friday the 18th at 12:56. I had to work from home that morning until it arrived, but as it was only lunch time it wasn’t such a big deal.
Overall I was very happy with the service.
There’s a white LED inside the black box attached to either side of the glasses, so you need to detach the box from the glasses, disassemble it, remove the LED and replace it with your new IR one.
The next day I went to Maplin.
I’ve replaced the white LEDs originally in the Rolson glasses with an LD271 Infrared Emitter. Unfortunately they only had one, but that was enough for me to confirm that I could take the current LED casing apart and replace the white one with my new IR.
Current stock levels around the Brighton area are also available for those of you that live in the local vicinity. Although you can check current levels, you can’t reserve or have a delivery made from one store to another. You could have them deliver to your home at an extra cost, but it seems like overkill for a single LED…
While I was in the shop I asked them to order a couple more in for me, which they did, and would have phoned to let me know when they turned, up had I not forgotten my own phone number and given them an incorrect one. I just kept checking the stock levels until I could see that my order had arrived, then went to collect them.
Replacing the current LEDs turned out to be really easy, you just need a small electronics screwdriver. There’s no PCB so no soldering to deal wtih, but one leg of the diode needs to be bent and trimmed so wire cutters would be handy.
The day I picked up my new LED I was out with my girlfriend, and she’d waited patiently for me in Maplin while I bought electronics gear, so I waited paitently for her while she was in Miss Selfridges trying on some new clothes. As I had time to kill I decided to have a go at working on the diode immediately.
After
modifying my new purchase to fit the shape of the the curerent diode. I sat on the floor of the shop, next to an 8 year old who was playing some games on his mobile phone, and used a key to bend one leg into approximately the same shape as the original. Very lo-fi, but I like tha. I’m sure there must be some kind of specialised tool for this kind of work, but I figured my house key would do the job just fine. In truth it would have been better with something a lot slimmer, just some kind of metal rod, but I was bored and really eager to get started. I asuspect that if you’re not careful you could snap the legs, so do try to go easy and take your time.
Waiting for your girlfriend iwho’s in the changing room with half a dozen items might not be such a basd scenario after all. Just remember to look up now and then when she comes out to show you each item, and give some honest but constructive opinions on the items.
To disassemblethe LED holder I used a #0 Philips head screwdriver, from a 6 Pieced Precision Screwdriver Set from B&Q
EAN: 0000005046065
Check the current stock in the Brighton store.
£1.98
