Pictures and Screenshots

A new device was created (taped together) to augment a mouse, it consists of a AAA battery, an IR LED and a toggle switch. It connects to a mouse via Velcro.





Here is a screenshot of the project so far. The yellow sphere denotes the location of the cursor in the modeling area. The user can create blocks, and move them around the 3D area using this augmented mouse.
Mapping the location of the input device to a point int the drawing area is done dynamically, unlike WiiDraw. The user marks out the desired drawing area, then presses the "calibrate" button. This maps the physical boundaries to the modeling area.

WiiModel - a continuation

The WiiDraw program was changed one final time, to integrate an IR led with a mouse, so that mouse clicks could be used to draw, while a sphere was constantly rendered on the screen to show position of the device.

This augmentation leads to other possibilities outside the scope of a simple drawing program. That is why the WiiDraw project will be reborn into WiiModel. WiiModel will be a simple 3D modeling environment with the ability to create and manipulate 3D objects.

Screenshots of the software and photos of the new hardware to follow.

Project nearing completion

The program now recognizes different strokes, instead of just one long one. I also attempted to smooth out the data by using bezier curves, but there are just too many points being sampled to smooth it noticeably.
I am now using a utility called WiimoteConnect that I found on http://www.wiimoteproject.com . This drastically decreases the amount of time it took me to connect the wiimotes to my laptop.

Screenshot time

As you can see below, I have drawn my name in the program, but the amazing thing is, I drew it in the Z direction! I then rotated the drawing so it could be read.

Drawing is a success

I was able to replace the movable sphere with an ArrayList of vertices, then draw the vertices as a line list. I initially had some problems, the program would run out of memory, and there would always be stray lines at the beginning and end of the drawing. It turned out that I was setting the vertices whether the wiimotes were receiving a signal or not, causing the ArrayList to bloat up with unused points, and waste memory. This was also the cause of the stray lines.
I also made a modification to the IR pen. It appears that if the LED is pointed directly at the wiimote camera, then the light is refracted causing some erroneous data. Also, the side of the LED was not bright enough, so the solution was to wrap the LED in a couple layers of scotch tape to diffuse the light. The IR pen looks even uglier than before, but it works a little better now.
More pictures and screenshots to follow.

Screenshot

Here is the screenshot of what I have in the program so far. The IR pen controls the sphere moving around the screen.

Great progress!

I made an IR light pen according to the schematics I posted earlier. It is not pretty, but it works.
I also have DirectX working together with the Wiimotes in a test application where I can move a sphere around in 3D space. Screenshots to come.