Introduction:
Our main goal with the Tiich system is to design a teaching aid/tool which would replace the conventional whiteboard in a classroom environment. We want our system to be used as an electronic based white board, having all the written information easily be saved and submitted to all the students in the classroom. We also want this system to be a touch-based system where you can open certain files by means of touch.
Our TIICH system is going to be based off of the SMART board but our system is going to be cheaper, more portable, overall a better system. While a SMART board is going to cost around $1000 to $2000 or more, our TIICH system is going to only cost around $100 excluding the projector. SMART board are supposed to be mounted on a wall and stationary, our TIICH system can be portable, using a portable projection screen and projector, you can easily set up our system anywhere to work with your laptop. We easily made a portable projection screen out of PVC pipes and a cheap white bed sheet for only $24.
Our TIICH system operates by having an infrared camera tracking the movements of an infrared LED. This lets you use the LED as a mouse for your computer when you connect it to our system. For the LED, we designed an infrared pen. This will let teachers write, move items, etc. We’re going to use PowerPoint to let teachers write notes. We’re wrote a code for macros so teachers can easily switch to different color pens, use highlighters, erase, go to next slide, etc.
Instead of using our infrared pen, some people may want to use their hands to interact with our TIICH system. This is why we have our infrared glove. This glove runs on a battery with a switch to turn the infrared on and off. This switch is turned on when you touch your middle finger and thumb together, and turning it off when you release. Your middle finger and thumb has wires running up the glove where we have aluminum foil for easier connectivity.
We’re going to build our own infrared camera that would let you connect to your computer or laptop via Bluetooth. We’re using a Wii remote as of right now, but decided that we would build our own instead. I don’t think this market would work if we would have to saw a Wii remote is included in our package. This would also make the infrared camera faster as well as easily customizable to different outputs of infrared lights.
Our first goal was to make an Infrared Glove which would be one of the input devices in our system(Shown in the Current System Diagram). We used a regular golf glove for this task.
The High Output IR LED – http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062565
We used an n-Size battery to power the LED. We did not need a resistor for this.
The n-Size battery – http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3875391
How the glove works – This glove runs on a battery with a switch to turn the infrared on and off. This switch is turned on when you touch your middle finger and thumb together, and turning it off when you release. Your middle finger and thumb has wires running up the glove where we have aluminum foil for easier connectivity.
(2) Next we designed a rear view projection screen.We used PVC pipes and a sheet from wallmart for this task.
Read more: Tiich System – Prototype Final Report
