Perform Amazing Tracking Wizardy with Wii Remote

Running out of things to do with your Wii until 2008? Johnny Lee of Carnegie Mellon University wants to put the insane success and underutilized motion-tracking capabilities of Nintendo's blockbuster system to good use--and that he has done.

"As of September 2007, Nintendo has sold over 13 million Wii game consoles. This significatnly [sic] exceeds the number of Tablet PCs in use today according to even the most generous estimates of Tablet PC sales," writes Lee. "This makes the Wii Remote one of the most common computer input devices in the world. It also happens to be one of the most sophisticated. It contains a 1024x768 infrared camera with built-in hardware blob tracking of up to 4 points at 100Hz. This significantly out performs any PC 'webcam' available today.

Using a mounted Wii remote and store-bought LEDs, Lee pulls off three impressive (and dirt-cheap) mods: multi-point finger tracking, head tracking to simulate 3D spaces represented on a flat screen, and a multi-point interactive whiteboard, with the latter two being particularly impressive and useful. Lee's videos demonstrate the simplicity of his work and hint at just some of their practical functionality. He's even got all the necessary software available to download.

And seriously--even if you never end up doing any of this stuff yourself, just watching the head tracking video is a trip.