His other project, the Wiimote powered interactive whiteboard, is just as impressive and twice as useful. It turns any projector, monitor, or laptop screen into an interactive display.

Here is an eye-popping video by Dr. Lee giving an example of his interactive whiteboard technology:

After you build the infrared LED pen (detailed later in this post), you can use it just like you would your mouse. Move around windows, draw diagrams, and distract annoying kids by opening Microsoft paint and letting them have at it. It is not only a simple software toy, but it can be immensely useful as a presentation tool.

Connecting your Wiimote via Bluetooth

The first step in both of these projects is to connect your Wiimote to your PC via Bluetooth. You have two choices with this, you can connect using a 15 day free trial of a program called BlueSoleil, or you can trust windows to connect to your Wiimote and handle the connection. I have had terrible luck with BlueSoleil so I used the Windows Bluetooth connection suite. If you choose to use BlueSoleil here is a page showing what needs to be done.

I’m not a fan of trial software, so here is how I did it in Windows:

With the Bluetooth dongle of your choice (I chose a Linksys USBBT100) inserted into your computer, the new hardware wizard should detect and automatically install your dongle. When that is done there will be a Bluetooth symbol in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. Double click it and this screen should come up:

Click on Add… and the Add Bluetooth Wizard will come up. Make sure to click on the option showing that your device is ready to be connected.
After that, hold the 1 and 2 buttons on your Wiimote, this puts it in discovery mode. After the Wizard sees and adds your Wiimote, this screen will pop up:

Double click on the Nintendo peripheral:

Make sure you choose ‘Don’t use a passkey’! This is crucial. Hit next:

And you are now connected with your Wiimote. It will show up in your Devices list and all four blue lights on your Wiimote should be blinking. They will stay blinking as long as it is connected to your PC.
With that over with, 90% of the pain and suffering you will most likely have with this project are over. The first time I tried to do these projects it took me over an hour to connect my Wiimote using BlueSoleil. Finally fed up, I worked out the Windows version you see above.

Materials Required for Interactive Whiteboard

• A Windows computer* with Bluetooth and a monitor or projector
• One Wiimote
• One Infrared LED
• One AA or AAA single battery pack
• Around a foot of small gauge wire
• A pushbutton momentary switch
• Body of a pen
• Soldering gun and solder
• Wire cutter/stripper
• Electrical Tape
• Latest Wii Interactive whiteboard software

*There are some hit and miss issues with Vista. When I did this project I used XP machines; your results may vary.

Creating Interactive Whiteboard Hardware

In this section you basically create something from scratch. It’s a very simple circuit involving a power source, a switch, and an infrared LED.

Here is a preassembled pen light. It shows the simple circuit before it is compacted:

A good place to start would be to solder both of the wires onto the switch:

Then threading those wires into the body of the pen:

And then soldering the LED to both of the exposed wires. Take care to either hot glue or tape one of the terminals so that you don’t get a short circuit:

When that is completed tidy up the pen however you like, but you should have a final product:

Connect your Wiimote to your PC and place it at a distance and an angle that allows it to see all of the whiteboard. Launch the whiteboard program and go through the four point calibration. After that you are good to go!

I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial, if you have any issues with setting up either of these projects please visit Dr. Lee’s homepage and forums. There are a lot of resources there that can help with Vista issues and hardware incompatibility.

Here are some links that may prove useful: Johnny Lee’s Wiimote Project,  Interactive Whiteboard FAQ, Head Tracking FAQ.

His research with the programs are focused on Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and repurposing a Wiimote and infrared LED’s (which act similar to the Wii-bar) to perform head tracking and to create interactive whiteboards. Instead of paying hundreds of dollars for the software and hardware inherent in these two systems, you can create either or both of them for around $50 thanks to the efforts of Dr. Lee.

Head Tracking

Head tracking is usually a luxury reserved for virtual reality researchers and high tech virtual meeting setups in corporate offices. It relies on finding the position of a single person relative to the screen and adjusting the screen contents to give the illusion of looking through a window into a 3-D environment. Traditional setups use sophisticated facial and head recognition software in order to locate the user in the room.

Because of the two dimensional nature of 99.999% of displays in the world, the head tracking induced 3-d effect only works for 1 person, the person whose head is being tracked. Everyone else in the room will not get the same effect.

I could go on to explain exactly how this system works, but Dr. Lee has been kind enough to post a video online explaining exactly what you need to know about how his software works, which is inserted at the start of this article.

Materials Required for Head Tracking

I’ll begin showing you how to create these projects by giving the materials list:
• A Windows computer* with Bluetooth and a monitor or projector
• One Wiimote
• One set of LED safety glasses
• Two Infrared LED’s
• Soldering gun and solder
• Necessary screwdrivers and or wire cutters needed for your particular set of safety glasses
• Wii head tracking software

*There are some hit and miss issues with Vista. When I did this project I used XP machines, your results may vary.

There is a chance that you will need to download and install the Microsoft Visual C# Express Edition in order to get the software to work properly. Also, Direct X is needed.

Creating head tracking hardware

Unfortunately the LED glasses I used for this project are discontinued and the link above in the materials section is for a different set. The basic principles are the same however.

Soldering:

For those of you who find soldering a challenge or have never had the chance to get your hands dirty fusing electronics together, here is a great piece by Instructables detailing what you have been missing out on.

You are going to need to open up the LED section of your glasses:

Carefully take note of how everything is wired, connected, and placed. If you need to draw a diagram to help then do so.

Snip off or de-solder the white LED and solder on the Infrared LED:

Then put everything back in its place and you are good to go:

One thing to keep in mind is this: now that you have infrared LED’s, you won’t be able to tell if they are on or not. A handy trick to tell is to use a cell phone camera on video mode and look at the glasses. Most digital cameras can see some of the infrared spectrum and it will be obvious that you have your lights on and are draining battery.

Now that you have the hardware, all you have to do is connect your Wiimote to your PC and run the software. But before you do that you really should read the readme file included in the zip you downloaded. It tells you that you need to edit a file by inputting the measurement of your screen in centimeters and editing a Boolean value to true or false depending on if your Wiimote is above or below your screen.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and will join us next week when we’ll show you how to build your own Interactive Whiteboard.

Here are some links that may prove useful: Johnny Lee’s Wiimote Project,  Interactive Whiteboard FAQ, Head Tracking FAQ.

Photo courtesy [henning].

Well, I’m in the business of shattering misconceptions – and business has been pretty busy lately.

Anonymity

When you connect to servers and peers over the Internet they often record your MAC address and NetBIOS name. MAC address stands for Medium Access Control address. Without going into too much detail, this is similar to the “street address” of your computer. For those who might argue that the IP address of the computer is its “street address” I like to point out the the IP address is not permanent, it depends on where your computer is and its network settings. The MAC address is hard coded into the NIC (Network Interface Card) of your computer. For the most part you cannot edit or change this small series of numbers and it is an exquisite identifier to your particular computer. There are 281,474,976,710,656 possible MAC addresses, meaning there is little chance for overlap and someone else having your MAC address. Overlaps do occur, but if an organization such as the RIAA or MPAA happens to have logged your MAC address . . . chances are their lawyers have you between a rock and a hard place.

The NetBIOS name of a computer is a small identifier for a particular computer on a network. You can edit this at will using system settings, but it’s not something the average person would know how to do. Most people set it once and forget about it, which gives it the potential to uniquely identify your particular computer over a long period of time. Not always a good thing to do depending on your browsing habits.

Now that I’ve introduced a couple of sobering bits of information that put a downer on your concepts of anonymity over the Internet, I’m going to let you know of a handy little program that will get rid of these problems.

Get MadMACS.

Whats Included in the .zip file:

MadMACS automatically generates a random MAC address when your windows machine starts up. It also picks a random NetBIOS name from a dictionary text file. I suggest placing it in the C:\ directory, as it runs from its folder upon startup (I hate cluttering my desktop, but its up to your own personal preference). It works in Vista but the User Access Control “feature” in Vista will ask your permission for it to run every single time you start your computer up.

Once you set it up you no longer have to worry about it, it runs automatically in the background at startup.

Here is the setup process:

The next screen is mostly if you are re-installing MadMACS. However I don’t believe it would hurt anything if you went ahead and cleared the files.

You really want to say yes to this question. And obviously you won’t have the same Ethernet card as me

Now this part is a little tricky. I suggest simply clicking Ok and forgetting about this screen. However, if you want to be especially crafty you can set a specific prefix to your mac address that makes it look like your hardware came from a different hardware company. For instance, you have a Realtek NIC card and you want to make sure the world doesn’t realize you have one. Look up the prefixes here.

You can “have” any hardware you want.

Like I said earlier, it is nice to have the MadMACS install folder in an out of the way place, because you’re going to want to run at start up:

IP Filtering

When you visit an ordinary website you are making a connection to its web server. What you probably don’t realize or think about is that your computer also connects to potentially dozens of other servers if the website has ads. Sometimes these ad servers are run by less than reputable companies that have no qualms about placing tracking and malicious software onto your machine. Wouldn’t it be nice to block these connections before bad things happen to your precious box?

For those people who like to use peer to peer programs to download various files both legally and illegally might also want a program that blocks connections to bad servers/peers. It might be best to avoid peers under the control of organizations who frown upon media sharing, or peers located in government and educational institutions. Never fear, Phoenix Labs has a solution for your woes:

Peer Guardian 2
http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/

The people behind Peer Guardian maintain block lists that can block government, educational, and malware institutions as well as known bad peers connected with anti-P2P organizations. It will protect you from inadvertently connecting to malicious ad servers, giving you a better handle on your security.

I won’t go through the install process of PeerGuardian, its just a normal install setup, but I will showcase some of its features:

This is the main menu of PG2. Notice how many IP’s it blocks. Nearly a BILLION.

One thing you may want to watch out for is that handy little “Block HTTP” button on the right. If you suddenly find you cannot view any web pages or check email, etc – its most likely because you have that button active.

The List Manager page where you can create your own custom block list and manage all of the other block lists. These are my 3 favorite stock block lists, on other computers I included the government and educational block lists.

The custom settings page, you can have blocked IP’s show up in red on the main page for that extra dramatic effect.

The incredibly sweet History section, where you can see every single IP connection your computer has made since running PG2.

With these two programs your Internet activities will be much more secure. The combination of anonymity and IP filtering is a deadly combination to those who wish to eavesdrop and data mine from average Internet users. But you’re not the average Internet user are you?