How to Install and Run Pentabulous

Table of Contents
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1
Minimum Requirements ...................................................................................................................1
How to obtain a copy of Pentabulous ...............................................................................................1
How to Install Pentabulous ...............................................................................................................2
The Location of the Wiimote ............................................................................................................4
Running Pentabulous for the First Time ...........................................................................................5
Connecting the Wiimote to your computer ............................................................................. 5
The Pentabulous Window ....................................................................................................... 6
Calibrating Pentabulous .......................................................................................................... 8
Using Pentabulous ..........................................................................................................................12

Introduction

In December 2007, Johnny Chung Lee, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh,
released a program that allowed users to use the wireless remote from Nintendo's Wii gaming system
with an infrared light pen as an interactive whiteboard. The “Wiimote Project” was born.

Now, Penteractive.us has released Pentabulous. Pentabulous is a simple to install, easy to calibrate, and
easy to use program that allows a classroom teacher to easily connect to a Wiimote and control the
teacher's computer from the front of the classroom using nothing but an infrared light pen.

Minimum Requirements
Be sure that you have the following before attempting to install or run Pentabulous:

• Windows XP or Vista. It should run on Windows 7 but has not been fully tested.
• Microsoft.NET 3.5. (Download from
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=E3821449-3C6B-42F1-9FD9-
0041345B3385&displaylang=en)
• A Bluetooth adapter (or built-in Bluetooth). (You can purchase a Bluetooth adapter at
http://penteractive.us)
• A Wireless Remote for the Wii gaming system (Henceforth referred to as a Wiimote.)
• An infrared light pen emitting infrared light with a wavelength of 940 NM. (Pens are available
at http://penteractive.us)
• A projector and a hard flat surface – like a whiteboard - onto which to project your computer's
image or a large LCD screen.

How to obtain a copy of Pentabulous

To obtain a copy of Pentabulous, visit http://penteractive.us and follow the link at the right of the page
to Pentabulous.
 How to Install Pentabulous
OK. So you have a Wiimote, a projector, a whiteboard, an infrared light pen, and a copy of
Pentabulous. Now it is time to install Pentabulous.

The installation of Pentabulous is very simple.

Locate the file pentabulous_setup.exe on your computer. Open the file.

You will
be
greeted
with a
“Read
Me”
window
like the
one
below.
Be sure
to read
the text
carefully and follow the instructions contained there.
Once you have read and agreed to the text contains in the ReadMe window, select Next to proceed.

Select to folder in which to install Pentabulous. (Or accept the default location of
C:\ Program Files\pentabulous.) Select Next.

Pentabulous will be installed

to the location selected and
you will see a window like
the one here.

Yes, installation is that simple.

 The Location of the Wiimote
Before running Pentabulous, you must give some very serious thought to where you will place the
Wiimote relative you your whiteboard. The placement of the Wiimote relative to the whiteboard is
perhaps the most crucial part of your Wiimote whiteboard project. Here are some tips on placing the
wiimote in your classroom.

In order to get the Wiimote placed correctly, perhaps it is important to understand how the Wiimote, the
infrared light pen, and the Bluetooth adapter work together as an input device for your computer.

The Wiimote is a remarkable piece of technology that pairs a Bluetooth radio with an infrared camera.
The infrared camera can “see” sources of infrared light and the Bluetooth radio can communicate with
the Bluetooth adapter on the computer. The Wiimote will “see” the infrared light pen and send the
location of the infrared “dot” to the computer via the Bluetooth radio. Once the location of the infrared
“dot” is passed to the computer, Pentabulous “reads” the location of the “dot” and reacts accordingly.

The most important piece of this puzzle to understand is the interaction between the infrared light pen
and the Wiimote. This interaction requires a clean line of sight between the point of the infrared light
pen and the Wiimote. NOTHING CAN BE IN THE WAY OF THE END OF THE INFRARED
LIGHT PEN AND THE CAMERA IN THE WIIMOTE.

The camera in the Wiimote has a field of vision of approximately 40 degrees in the horizontal plane
and 30 degrees in the vertical plane.

Perhaps the best location of the Wiimote is slightly above the top of the projected area at a distance of 2
to 3 meters from the whiteboard. This should allow the Wiimote to “see” the entire projected area
while being close enough to “see” the infrared pen. There are modules in Pentabulous that will greatly
help in placing the Wiimote to get the best results.

It may be difficult for you to mount the Wiimote from the ceiling of your classroom – especially for
testing purposes. In this case, you should place your Wiimote about 2 meters from the whiteboard
slightly to the left or the right of the projector – as you look at the board – pointing toward the middle
of the projected area.

For more on Wiimote camera angles – http://www.wiimoteproject.com/wiimote-whiteboard/wiimote-

camera-angles/
 Running Pentabulous for the First Time

Connecting the Wiimote to your computer

When you run Pentabulous, you will be greeted with a small window with two options like this one.

The first thing that needs to be done is to “connect” your Wiimote with
your computer. This connection process is the process of “pairing” the
Bluetooth radio in the Wiimote with your Bluetooth adapter in your
computer. This is similar to “pairing” a Bluetooth headset to a Bluetooth
enabled cell phone. Fortunately, Pentabulous makes this very simple.

Select the button named “Connect Wiimote” in the window shown above. You
will then see a window like the one shown here:

Press buttons 1 and 2 simultaneously on the Wiimote. The four blue LEDs on
the Wiimote will start flashing. The Wiimote LEDs will flash for 20 seconds. If
the LEDs stop flashing before the Wiimote connection window changes, press
buttons 1 and 2 again. It may take more than 20 seconds for the Wiimote
connection software to complete the connection.
 The Pentabulous Window
Once the Wiimote is “connected” to the computer, Pentabulous will
display a window like the one here. There are 7 items in this window:

• The Wiimote Battery indicator

• The Wiimote Calibration Button
• The Wiimote Sensitivity setting
• The “Smoothing” setting
• The Cursor Control Toolbar Button
• A display of the number of IR dots seen by the Wiimote camera
• The Tracing Utilization Window

The battery indicator is an approximation of the battery life remaining

for the batteries in the Wiimote.

The Calibration Button will be used in the next step to calibrate

Pentabulous.

The Wiimote Sensitivity setting controls the sensitivity of the infrared

camera in the Wiimote. The higher the setting, the more “sensitive”
the Wiimote camera will be. The sensitivity needs to be set high
enough to “see” the light pen but not too high as to react to “false
positives” from other possible infrared light sources.

The Smoothing setting should be set to 9 unless you have a slow

processor.

The cursor control toolbar button will turn on the cursor control bar.
(More on this later.)

The Visible IR dots will show how many infrared “dots” are visible at that instant. This should be 1
when the infrared light pen is “lit”. You should adjust the Wiimote sensitivity so this reads 1 when the
infrared pen is lit and 0 when the pen is off.

The Tracking Utilization window will help you place your Wiimote. (See below)
In this example, notice the Tracking Utilization window. It shows
that the calibrated area for the projected screen area is 30% of the
area that is “seen” by the Wiimote's camera. This is an acceptable
calibration.

This does indicate that it is possible to move the Wiimote closer to

the whiteboard. As long as the white quadrilateral is located
completely within the gray area, the Wiimote camera can “see” and
react to the infrared pen at any point on the projected area.

If the white quadrilateral is too small, the Wiimote should be moved

closer to the whiteboard. If the white quadrilateral does not fit
within the gray area, the Wiimote needs to be moved and the
calibration needs to be repeated. (See more in the Calibration
section.)
Calibrating Pentabulous

This is the most challenging and most important part of using Pentabulous. Once you get a good
calibration, using Pentabulous is quite simple.

To
calibrate
Pentabulo
us to be
used with
your
Wiimote,
press the
“Calibrate
Location
(Wiimote
A)” on
the
Pentabulo
us
Window (or press the A button on the Wiimote). You will be greeted with a white calibration screen
with a red “target” near the top left hand corner of the screen like this:
Touch your infrared pen to the center of the target and press the button on your pen to illuminate the
pen. (Remember. You will not be able to see the “illumination” from the end of the pen since the
human eye cannot “see” light of 940 NM wavelengths but the Wiimote camera can.) The upper left
hand target will disappear and a new target will appear in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
Touch your pen in the center of that target and press the button.

Repeat the process for the lower right and lower left targets as they appear.

If any of the four targets do not disappear when you “click” the pen in the center of the target, the
Wiimote camera did not “see” that “click”. If this happened, you should press “Esc” on the computer
keyboard to stop the calibration process. The Wiimote camera will need to be moved and/or re-aimed
in order to “see” the target that failed in the previous attempt. Once the Wiimote has been moved
and/or re-aimed, press the “Calibrate Location (Wiimote A)” button again (or the A button on the
Wiimote) and repeat the process until Pentabulous “reacts” to all four of the targets. Remember that
there MUST be a clear line of sight between the Wiimote camera and the tip of your infrared light pen.

Repeat this process until all four targets are recognized by Pentabulous.
Once your calibration is completed, you will see a window that looks
like the one shown here. At this time we are most interested in
looking at the area at the bottom of this window entitled Tracking
Utilization. In this area, we will see a white quadrilateral inside a
gray rectangle. The gray rectangle represents what the Wiimote
camera can “see”. The white quadrilateral represents the projected
screen area that has been calibrated with the Pentabulous calibration
process. In this example, the calibrated area is 70% of what the
Wiimote camera can see. This represents an excellent calibration. In
this case the Wiimote is positioned in front of the projected area at an
appropriate distance away from the screen. We want the percentage
of utilization to be as high as we can get it while positioning the
Wiimote in the best location for our classroom environment. These
two issues often counteract each other and we must compromise one
for the sake of the other.

Below, we will show some possible views for the Tracking

Utilization window.
In this calibration, the Wiimote is placed just to the left of the
projected area about 10 feet from the screen pointing toward the
screen. It is further away from the projected area than in the previous
example. Notice that the quadrilateral is “further” from looking like a
parallelogram. This is due to the angle at which the camera is placed
relative to the plane of the screen. This calibration is acceptable and
will work well but could be improved by moving the Wiimote closer
to the screen.

In this calibration, the angle is more pronounced than before. Notice

that the quadrilateral is much “taller” on the left side than on the right.
Again, this calibration is acceptable and will work. You may find that
you get better performance on the left side of the screen than on the
right but is should not be too noticeable. You may need to increase the
sensitivity of the Wiimote if your calibration looks like this.

In this calibration, the Wiimote is place much too far from the screen.
Notice that the calibrated area is only 4% of the viewable area of the
camera. If your calibration looks something like this, you need to
move the Wiimote closer to the projected surface. This calibration is
NOT ACCEPTABLE. You must move your Wiimote closer to the
projected surface and try again.

Another example of a BAD CALIBR ATION: Notice that the

calibrated area is a triangle and not a quadrilateral. In this case it was
due to “clicking” the IR pen when it was not pointed at the target. The
calibrated area MUST BE A QUADRILATERAL. If the calibrated
area begins to look too much like a triangle, you must re-calibrate
and/or reposition the Wiimote.
 Here is an example of an excellent calibration. This can only
happen if the Wiimote is placed directly in front of the projected
surface and at an optimal distance. This may not be possible in
your classroom for a variety of reasons. While this is optimal for
how the pen interacts with the Wiimote, it may not be optimal for
your classroom. Remember that there must always be a clean line
of sight between the tip of the IR pen and the Wiimote's camera.

Once you have determined the proper location of the Wiimote for your classroom, future calibrations
will be quite simple. All you will need to do is to press the A button on the Wiimote (or select the
calibration button in the Pentabulous window) and select the four points on the projected display.
 Using Pentabulous

The hard part is over.

Once you have calibrated Pentabulous, you will see a button in the Pentabulous window that reads,
Cursor Control Toolbar. You will want to press that button to show the Cursor Control Toolbar and
then minimize the Pentabulous Window. The Cursor Control Toolbar looks like this:

You will notice that there are four buttons on the Cursor Control Toolbar. L, R, XX, and H/V.

L Left Mouse Button – this is the default behavior - If this is selected, any “pen clicks”
will be interpreted as left mouse clicks.
R Right Mouse Button - If this is selected, the next “pen click” will be interpreted as a
right mouse click. Then the control will revert to the default of “L”.
XX Double Click - If this is selected, the next “pen click” will be interpreted as a double
click of the left mouse button. Then control will revert to the default of “L”.
H/V This will toggle the display of the Cursor Control Toolbar between Horizontal
orientation and Vertical orientation. (See below)

You can now use your IR pen to control any program on your computer. Simply put the IR pen against
the whiteboard and press the button on the pen. The default behavior for Pentabulous is that the “click”
of the IR pen will be interpreted as a left mouse click in the location where the IR pen is pointed. You
can “drag” by pressing the button, hold the button down, and move the IR pen across the whiteboard.

If you need to “right-click” the mouse, select R from the Cursor Control Toolbar (as shown above).
The next “click” of the IR pen will be interpreted as a right-click at the location of the IR pen.
If you need to “double-click”, select XX from the Cursor Control Toolbar. The next “click” of the IR
pen will be interpreted as a double-click at the location of the IR pen.

Also useful for quick access to the right click is the L/R function accessible from the taskbar.

Place your pen on the L – double click and it turns to R. Your next click will be a right click.

When using Pentabulous, always be sure that there is a clear “line of sight” between the tip of the
infrared light pen and the Wiimote's camera. The placement of your hand when you use the IR pen
should be as shown in the pictures below:

Bad Hand Placement: The teacher here is holding the IR pen like a student would hold a pencil. This
increases the chance of obstructing the “view” of the IR pen by the Wiimote camera. Remember that
the light path between the tip of the pen and the Wiimote camera must not be blocked.

Good Hand Placement:In this picture,

the teacher is holding the light pen as he
would hold a piece of chalk to write on
a chalk board. (He is old enough to
remember chalk. Many teachers today
don't remember writing with chalk on a
chalk board.) Notice that the tip of the
pen is “exposed”. The Wiimote camera
can “see” the infrared light emitted
from the tip of the pen. Remember, the
Wiimote can only “see” the light if the
button on the pen is pressed.
If you need to use a keyboard while using Pentabulous, you can use the on-screen keyboard from
Microsoft. http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsxp/usingkeyboard.aspx

Many computers already have it installed and accessible.

Penteractive.us/Educon Tech would like to thank James Hays of Champaign, IL for his contribution to
the creation of this guide.

Copyright 2009 – Educon Tech

All Rights Reserved