Children’s Wii Remote Drawing Game with Finger Tracking

June 29th, 2009 by Swayze Smartt

Johnny Lee, originator of the Wii finger tracking concept, also described how to use a Wii remote to create a simple and inexpensive whiteboard. For children with physical and mental disabilities, Lee’s two concepts could easily be combined in a “whiteboard” which works by tracking finger movements. One would simply utilize an IR LED array, as described in a previous post, in place of an LED pen.  This cloud prove to be an entertaining game for young children and could even be used as a tool for physical therapy in children who have trouble using their hands. The drawing below shows the idea behind the concept.

Concept of how Wii remote drawing device would work

Concept of how Wii remote drawing device would work

An IR LED Array that works with the Wii Remote

June 24th, 2009 by Swayze Smartt

I’m currently working on a project replicating Johnny Lee’s Wii finger tracking and finally came up with a infrared led light source that actually worked.  I created an array of 24 880nm infrared LEDs which I purchased from Digikey. Using a 9-volt power source, I configured a circuit consisiting of 4 parallel sets of 6 LEDs in series. I used an oversized perfboard to allow for modular expansion (i.e. adding more arrays at a later time).