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[muneer]

Smart board Using distance meters.

Hello!

My name is Muneer.
Firstly, many congratulations to Johnny Lee and all coontributors for this wonderful project.

I was wondering whether this concept of making a smart board would work.(image is attached).  The idea is to use two distance meters to measure distance ‘a’ and distance ‘b’ from the transmitter in the pen to the top corners. Distance c is fixed and known. Using the distances, the x and y distance should be workable from the formulas(shown in image) I guess.

I have a few concerns and require your expert opinion,

a.   How can we construct the distance meter. (IR? Ultrasonic? Any available schematic...etc)
b.   Converting the x and y distances to pixel information
c.   Interfacing the board to a computer, possibly giving the input from the smart board directly as a mouse input.

or if you could suggest other practical ways other than using the wii-mote.

Could you please help me with this? Thanks.

[benpaddlejones]

muneer
I'm a little perplexed by your needs? Is this not what the IWB application already achieves?

Once calibrated a,b,c,y & x are all simply pre-calculated or derivatives of Pythagoras.

Are you after a math’s based application or what???

benpaddlejones

[muneer]

thanks for the reply, benpaddlejones.

Yes, you are right, but what i am basically looking at is some kind of an do-it-yourself stuff that replaces the functionality of the wii-mote.

With all respect to this forum and the idea of using wiimote for the smartboard, i am just wanting to figure out a alternate way to achieve the same smartboard without using wii-mote.

[benpaddlejones]

muneer
You are not the first to ask this question (most talk about a web cam equivilient). A web cam costs about $30 and has really low resolution. A wiimote costs $50 has really high resolution, specifically constructed to track light and has other really cool functions including keyboard and motion detection.

If you can build something better for $50 go for it!

benpaddlejones