It’s written in Processing, uses the WiiuseJ open source Java library (which I highly recommend, at least on the Windows side), and leverages the “Warper” class from Johnny Chung Lee’s Interactive Whiteboard project for mapping the x,y position of my hand on my desk to the correct x,y position in my Processing sketch.

I ended up moving the contraption that holds the Wiimote up as high as I could, since the FOV was definitely cramped (and still is). I think I need to open up the hole in the cardboard holder a bit so the FOV gets extended even more.

I ran into an issue with the tracking becoming very unreliable if the IR LED wasn’t pointed directly at the Wiimote up above. To compensate, I created a little cone out of aluminum foil and wrapped it around the LED. It has a wedge that’s open and faces the general direction of the Wiimote. This definitely did the trick as the light from the LED reflects off the foil and creates a much bigger target for the Wiimote to see.

Now I can start moving onto the other physical components of this piece.

I spent today doing two things. 1) Making the thing that suspends the Wiimote above my desk. 2) Making the modifications to a glove so that it’ll hold the LED assembly I made yesterday. Above, you can see the finished glove, which uses velcro to hold the battery pack in place and a scrap of t-shirt to hold the actual LED in place.

And below, you’ll see a WIP shot of the cardboard enclosure that wraps the Wiimote:

Here’s what the finished structure looks like:

This is just cardboard, duct tape, and a couple screws to hold it against the wall. Right now, my biggest concern revolves around the FOV of the Wiimote. I need to do some tests tonight or tomorrow to make sure it can see my whole drafting table when it’s tilted at an angle.

And since I’m going to be taking more pictures than should be shown here, I’ve created a Flickr set documenting the process of this project.

And finally, a little walk-thru of the stuff in meat-space:

Above, you’ll see the infrared (IR) LED contraption I’m making, which will eventually be mounted to a glove that I’ll be wearing while actually working on the project. The goal with this portion is to track the movements of my hand (the process of mark-making) — capturing the data for use in derivative pieces.

After seeing Johnny Chung Lee’s Wiimote Whiteboard project, I was driven to use the following components to accomplish my goal:

• Nintendo Wiimote for IR LED tracking
• AZiO BTD603-132 USB 2.0 BlueTooth Adapter, which uses the Toshiba Bluetooth stack — aparently the best for making the most of the Wiimote
• Battery-powered IR LED mounted on my hand to represent the gestural motion
• A Java-based library for capturing the IR LED point data (currently leaning toward WiiuseJ)

The final IR LED assembly (pre-glove-mounted) looks like this:

Now, I’ve never done anything with electronics, so this is my first encounter with a soldering iron, solder, resistors, ohms, amps, and volts. But, with some help from Instructables (check out LEDs for Beginners) and a current resisting calculator, things came together within an hour.

And here I am doing a goofy demo of what came of the afternoon: