Using an old donated laptop, we created a digital picture frame similar to one you might buy for $100 at a store. We unscrewed the LCD display and duct taped it to the back of the laptop so the display is on one side and the keyboard on the other.
The laptop is running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (though any operating system should work fine). We wanted anyone to be able to add new pictures for display so we needed something easy to use. We decided on Picasa which can be downloaded for free.
Here’s a side view to get an idea of how thick it is.
Here’s the back of the laptop.
One disadvantage to this design is that the keyboard keys can be easily pressed on accident and potentially disrupt the picture slideshow. We may try disabling the keyboard.
The computers in the tech lab at Gresham High School are on their own separate network. At the end of last year, I setup Squid and SquidGuard to block access to certain sites like YouTube and GameSpot because students were abusing their internet privileges instead of doing work.
I also setup and tested several statistics packages to analyze internet traffic. After some testing, SARG and Webalizer were decided on. This allows the administrator to see which sites are being visited most often so that they can be added to the blocklist.
This was setup on a firewall running Fedora 7. Squid and SquidGuard are both in the repositories so they can be installed via Yum. Your mileage may vary depending on what Linux distribution you are using, so you may have to install manually.
Configuring SquidGuard is a fairly straightforward process. In the configuration file, you define dest blocks which are lists of URLs and domains you wish to block. src blocks define which IP addresses on your network you wish to apply dest rules to. The acl block implements the dest and src blocks to create blocking rules. Visit the SquidGuard documentation for detailed instructions.
This system has been in active use since September 2007. So far it has worked like a charm. Several proxy websites that students use to bypass school filters have been found and blocked thanks to the traffic reports.
This is another project based on the work of Johnny Lee. I replaced the regular LEDs on a pair of light-up safety glasses with infrared LEDs so that the infrared camera in the Wii remote could track the wearer’s head. Using the software written by Lee, your display can be turned into a window into a virtual reality environment.
The glasses I used were AO Safety Light Vision 2 LED Safety Glasses ordered from Amazon. I replaced the LEDs with the infrared LEDs you can find at your local Radioshack. The Wii remote I used was the same one from the whiteboard project. Total project cost including Wii remote was around $65.
The goal of this project was to create an inexpensive interactive whiteboard. GHS currently uses SMART Boards, but they are very expensive. This project is based on the work of Johnny Lee who uses the infrared camera inside a Wii Remote (Wiimote) to track a homebrew IR pen. With this, we can emulate some functions of a SMART board. The total cost for this project is less than $60.
I created my IR pen using some parts you can get at any Radioshack and an old Expo whiteboard marker. It’s based on the schematic Lee provides. You can probably find all the parts you need lying around or at your local Radioshack. Depending on the what kind of battery and the voltage of the LED, you might need a resistor.
Basic materials for IR pen:
- Infrared LED
- Momentary switch
- Expo marker
- Wires
Take out the ink chamber of the marker and solder the parts together according to the schematic. I cut the marker barrel to fit all the components inside.
Drew Mickinney posted a YouTube video evaluating the Wiimote whiteboard against a commercial whiteboard in a middle school setting and found that there are many advantages to the Wiimote whiteboard. Kevin Makice also has a writeup of the video.
We’re not the only ones who are doing this project. An Amazon page for IR LEDs showed that other people were buy the same parts to create this project.
Other schools have also built Wiimote whiteboards:
And many teachers have expressed an interest in this project.