Hackathon: Virtual Segway Tour with Wii Fit Balance Board

Posted By svihackspace ~ 2nd August 2011

People always ask what we have been working on at SVI. The next few blog posts will cover the recent projects.One of the most interesting projects: Wii Fit Balance Board + OS X + Osculator + Node.js + Socket.io + Google Earth API + Monster Milk Truck + Google 3d Warehouse = Virtual Segway Tours anywhere in the world!

Check out the video:

Edit: New Video:

The source can be found at GitHub

From the original article:

First, connecting the balance board to a computer required an OS X application called Osculator (http://osculator.net/). It handled all the data being sent over bluetooth from the balance board and allowed us to pipe out the data as OSC messages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ope…) that other computers could receive.

From there, a Node.js server processed the messages with the help of Node-osc (http://github.com/automata/node-osc) and then used Socket.io to send all the balance board data to a browser with inspiration from a project called Node-hands (http://github.com/catshirt/node-…).

It turned out that using Google Maps Javascript API wasn’t going to be very responsive and instead the Google Earth plugin made for a much better fit—especially after finding Monster Milktruck (http://earth-api-samples.googlec…), an example app built with Earth’s API. Monster Milktruck had all the pieces needed to control navigation. Very addicting game.

From there it was just a matter of mapping the incoming balance board data to the gas, reverse, left, and right controls of Monster Milktruck and replacing the Milktruck with a Segway. Google 3d Warehouse to the rescue! Pre-built 3d Segway (http://sketchup.google.com/3dwar…).

About seven hour spent at Stanford’s SVI Hackspace well spent!

To read the original article click here!

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