doc

Title : Tracking fingers with the Wii remote
Link 1 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0awjPUkBXOU
Link 2 : http://my.opera.com/The-Doc/blog/2009/01/04/final-transcription

Hi, my name is Johnny Lee and I'm gonna show you something *called to do* with the Wii remote. Now, multi-point interaction has become very popular these days due to products like the iPort iPhone. But what I'm gonna show you in this video is how to track multiple fingers in thin air * ? * they do on Minority report using the Wii remote. Now to explain how this works, I'm gonna first have to talk a little bit about what's in the Wii remote. Now of course, there's the motion sensing part of it. But in a front a Wii remote is actually infrared camera, this camera's just like any other video camera we use, but it's sensitive only to infrared light, that's why you can track points like the Nintendo sensor bar or light bulbs or candles. So if you wanna track your fingers, all we need to do is make our fingers emit infrared light.

Now if your fingers are anything like mine, they don't emit very much infrared light, they are made up of skin. But what they would do is that they can reflect the small amount of light. So we do something like shine a bright remote control out it. The fingers' gonna reflect enough light for the Wii remote to see it.

A normal remote control is probably not gonna bright enough to do this. But what will be brighten up is in infrared LED array. Now this array may be a little bit * aricul ? * but you can probably make something sufficient with the * cryptory reducer ? *. Just to remember the hole in the middle and this is actually so the Wii remote can poke through and see through the LED array. The reason to do this is when you put your finger in front like we bounce of from the finger back through the hole to the Wii remote.

We put a LED array on top the TV, something I prepared * par a mote ? * and I'm pointed to the hole. Once we * pare ? * up the LED array, we'll be ready to test it out. Now this screen down here is the sensitivity adjustment from the Nintendo Wii. And up here you can see that the LED array is powered on. Now the red glow is invisible to humans but visible to the camera that we are filming with. Now already you can see that the Nintendo Wii remote is responding to my hands and to my fingers.

Now tracking individual fingers is a little bit tough there's a lot of action noise and we have to be pretty close to the Wii remote. The * poor bar ? * far enough, my fingers disappear. To increase the amount infrared light our fingers reflect, we can use a little bit of reflective tape. You can buy this off Ebay for about three or four dollars a sheet. And you can put on a square in your finger

As a result, this makes your finger a lot easier to see by the Wii remote and we can get a lot further from the screen and have it still tracked. We can also make our fingers disappear by bending our fingers down.
If I put a squared tape on the fingers of each of my hands, we cannot track two points very easily.

Also, rather than putting the reflective tape directly onto the finger, you can create loops of paper or plastic material. So that you grid this ring so can easily slip on and off the finger. This way, * that histle ? * on the fraction of tape won't wear out.

Since the Wii remote talks bluetooth, it's relatively easy to hocked it up to a PC. On a screen, it's * ??? * like * use as/users ? * two points interaction. Since I'm using a reflective tape, I can say that a very comfortable distant on my couch and interact with a television just by waving my hands in the air.

So that's how with the Wii remote and a LED array and a little bit of reflective tape you get the whole minority report interaction going. But if you actually use this for a while, you'll find that waving in your hands up in the air is a little bit tiring, so it made out actually be very good for productively applications. But it's definitely very cool to play with and it's pretty easy to do, so thanks for watching !