Wiimote whiteboard roundup
October 21, 2008 by Richard van Dijk
Filed under Hardware
So we have had our first week of having the wiimote in a class at Katikati College. Next week we deploy to another eight classrooms across the cluster as well as three at Omokoroa No 1 School. So far we have built some of our own pens and brought some from penteractive.us who were very happy to send them out to us. I still prefer our own pens largely due to the button and slightly larger size of the pen. There are several other vendors for the pens out there and they can be found on the wiimote whiteboard page.
Also for schools interested in this the wiimote for schools how to is a good place to start. For the software to run the boards I have been using Uwe Schmidt’s on the mac and Boonjin’s Smoothboard on PC. The smoothboard software is great for the extra functions as it makes the area outside the board useful for backspace return etc as well as a host of functions for google earth and sketchup. The next step for us will be an instructional video on how to make the pens. If you would like a demo and live close enough let us know and if you really don’t want to get you hands dirty we can organise a ready to install kit for you where the wiimote is mains powered and the button for syncing with bluetooth is extended to the front of the classroom.
Hi Richard
I have been hearing a lot about the Wiimotes and have a couple of questions
1. how are they going? Now you have been using a while are teachers happy with them? any hidden problems you have come up against?
2. Did you attach a power cable to the wiimote?
I am quite interested in these as you say huge cost saving
and existing interactive whiteboard software can be used with them also.
Thanks looking forward to hearing from you.
Keri
Hi Keri
to answer your questions.
They are going very well, some problems on older 3yr+ Toshiba’s bluetooth but remember we give these to every staff member who wants one not just the ones who are naturals with IT so there is a lot of PD with it (as there should be with any IWB)
Yes ours are mains powered and have a switch to initiate bluetooth syncing.
If you have any more questions feel free to drop me an email or give me a call.
Richard
Hey,
I would just like to ask have you tried the latest version of Smoothboard by Boonjin? What is your review on that?
Stephy
Once I find a windows machine I’ll do another review. We use Uwe Schmidt’s app as we and a lot of the schools we deal with have macs. But I have found the Bluetooth sync a pain on Toshiba’s so if this latest version fixes that it will be great.
Hi there Richard,
I’m headmaster in a high school in Greece. I’ve been using the wiimote whiteboard in my school for over one year. My question is how can I have the wiimote mains powered and add a switch to initiate bluetooth syncing
r3m
Hi r3m
To do this you have to pull the wiimote apart and do a little bit of soldering. I’ll dig out some photos to show you what to do. But essentially you get a 3 v adapter and a plug for this then solder on to the terminals. that makes it mains powered. then you need a tri wing scremdriver to open it up fully and you can then solder two wires on to the side of the sync button (the otherside of the red button) and then have a switch on the end.
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the answer. It’s still not quite obvious the way to achieve it. I need more details.
Hi Richard,
Thanks for your reviews!
Hi Richard,
I’m a Toshiba user as well..but I do not find any problem with the Bluetooth sync since I’m currently using Smoothboard. Maybe you can try this software in seeing whether it can help to resolve your problem.
Hi Stephanie
Yes things have improved a lot over the months since I wrote this original post and many of the issues are now easy fixes.
Hi Folks,
I am not trying to hijack this thread for commercial purposes but there are simple solutions to all the earlier wiimote whiteboard drawbacks. I am part of 3P Interact Ltd a small NZ company formed by myself and two other school principals to advance this tech. As an example, our main product – the classroom kit – means the user simply clicks on a desktop icon, pushes a remote synch switch (about to go wireless) and that is it. By all means check out our dedicated blog if you are interested http://3pinteract.blogspot.com/
We are always happy to help schools (whether or not we have sold them something!), so feel free to ask questions.