I presented this idea to Boon Jin directly and he really got me thinking about it. Now I need some help because my expertise is not up to par for this one.

I wanted to use the tracking facility of smoothboard which means I need a pen that's always on. Easy enough, except that then I need to input mouse clicks either with the mouse buttons on my laptop or cannibalize a mouse to add functionality to my pen. I just saw a youtube video where someone had done that. But I had different idea.

What if when the light turned off that was registered as a click, and when it's turned back on tracking would continue tracking as usual? So far so good except what about click and drags? Okay then, when the light goes off, register a mouse down, when the light comes back on register a mouse up? Okay again, except for the midpoints of the drag are now un-followable.

Finally I thought a pen rigged to be always on with a master switch that changes to a blink when you press it might do the trick. A series of short enough lines would work, or even better if the software could track the blinks and not do the mouse up until the blinking stops.

But if I understand it correctly the wiimote is actually tracking the dots, not the software, so how fast could it blink to have the wiimote still transmit it as an off-on sequence? Blink it too fast and tracking the blinks may not be reliable, blink it too slow and curves become impossible.

What I need is:

• an experimental circuit to blink an IRled at a variable rate in front of the wiimote to gauge how fast it needs to blink
• I need to figure out how to make a simple circuit that blinks at that rate with small enough components and low enough power requirements that they can be hidden in a pen

Both of which are beyond my greenie soldering skills. If there's anyone here who could either tutor me or do this, I'd be grateful. Once I have this I need to convince Boon Jin to add this to his software.