V. 2.0 Complete

Well the new circuit was a success, although it wound up costing much more than expected. It did however double the range off of v. 1 and it seems like it made it much less sensitive to positional variation of the emitter. (Eg, it works better for a wider range of angles)

Final schematic was 6 IR LED's wired in series with a 15 ohm resistor all on a 9V battery. I upped the voltage to keep current down and it also allowed me to leverage parts I already had.

Parts list
4 IR-LED's 1.99 (each)
1 pack 9v battery clips 1.99
1 set breadboard jumprers 7
1 pack 22 ohm resistors .99 (Picked these up only since a lot of the equations I'd been working out seemed to require this resistor, this was not an immediate need)
1 button, on-off, spst switch 1.99 (I think)
1 9v battery ?

I did however get to test the rig on the projection screen and it works great. We did uncover one major problem. The angle between the camera and the emitter has to be on a virtually horizontal plane both to each other and to the axes of motion. Now that would usually mean you'd have to hang the wii mote on the level at eye level, which is far from optimal (unles you've got a CRT that already stands at eye level in which it's moot) but for a projection environment, or in the case of your having to view it from a laptop the odds of getting the wii mote in such a favorable position are slim. This needs to be adapted for.

However, with funding being essentially out for this phase, I will attempt the finger tracking demo next, just as proof of concept and then we're going under the hood boys and going to see if we can't make these little babies useful.

Success!

Well this has to have been the easiest part. Even with my un-optomized version, I have a working proto-type. The range on the IR sensor can't be more than a yard or two, and getting the blue-tooth to reliably recognize the Wii-Mote is still proving a bit challenging. But we have a working proto-type. I figure a trip to Radioshack at lunch tomorrow on my break aught to give me the parts to up the output on the LED's (Hrm... perhaps if I use a block of 4 instead of a single one it'll increase the range, thus letting me hook the system up to a projection system...) But I'll lay it out now.

1). Wii Mote : Cost: $40
2). Misc. Parts from Radio Shack $15
3). Blue Tooth Dongle for PC $30

Final cost for project: 85 + tax.

Now if you could've waited, or shopped around a bit more you might've been able to save a few bucks (or if you own a mac with blue tooth already built in *grumble grumble*) but I wanted it now. So now some time will go into optomizing the throw length as that'll be required for the next phase. Finger tracking!