• Claire Mitchell
• Ethan Goldblum
• Adeola Bannis
• Nirav Patel

• Create an interactive, collaborative experience for Disney Parks using "magic wands" that can communicate with one another and a coordinator to play games, draw digital images, participate in voting, and allow for park-wide guest tracking.
• Develop a network of low-cost end user devices and base stations connected by a low-power wireless mesh standard.

Currently Disney patrons wait in line for hours to be able to go on rides, without any interaction with one another. This detracts from the magical Disney experience. Using our wands, Disney park go-ers will be able to collaboratively doodle and play games, along with voting for park events and participating in surveys. Once our project is implemented it should greatly improve the Disney experience by creating an environment of collaboration and interactivity, instead of a solitary park-going experience.

• H-ITT Clicker
  • Used in education for in class participation.
  • Users must all aim at a common IR or RF receiver.
  • Can only be used to vote (up to 10 choices.
• Get-In-Line
  • Games and activities for making queues more enjoyable to wait in currently in development at CMU's ETC.
  • Get-In-Line is purely a software effort, currently using cell phones for participation, while we are proposing special low cost Disney-themed hardware.
• Wiimote Smoothboard
  • Turns a surface into an interactive whiteboard using a Wii remote as an IR camera.
  • Users must be standing at the whiteboard to use Smoothboard.
  • Our system tracks multiple IR blobs.

• Hardware:
  • Wand:
    • Atmel ATmega168V Microcontroller
    • XBee 2.5 Series 802.15.4 SoC
    • LIS302DL 3-Axis Accelerometer
    • RGB and Infrared LEDs
  • Base Station:
    • Desktop computer
    • Logitech Quickcam Communicate STX
    • XBee 2.5 Series 802.15.4 SoC
• Software:
  • Wand:
    • Arduino
  • Base Station:
    • Linux
    • Pygame
    • PyGTK
• Protocols:
  • 802.15.4
  • Zigbee

• System must be able to track 10 IR blobs simultaneously
• Wand must be able to send and receive events over Zigbee
• System must be able to coordinate button presses and RF information with events
• System must be able to recognize gestures from output of an accelerometer
• System must be able to set LEDs on wands

• Network must not drop more than 5% of Zigbee packets
• Batteries must provide power to operate wand for 1 week of normal use
• Wand should have 100ft range outdoors
• Wand must be packaged to be easy to carry around and safe for children to use
• Wand should be able to sleep when moved away from a coordinator so as not to waste power
• Cameras should be able to process movement information and have image appear on screen in real time

• Wand power consumption too high

  Investigate arduino and xbee sleep modes, consider using only xbee with direct i/o, different power source?

• Image tracking too slow and/or unstable

  Limit number of simultaneous wands

• Noisy accelerometer signal

  Investigate other accelerometer devices, average/integrate signal over time

• Network instability or range issues

  Consider other network protocols

To be completed.

To be completed.

To be completed.

To be completed.

To be completed.

• Project Proposal and Requirements, Team Project Presentation, February 4, 2009
• Mid-semester Project Status, Team Project Presentation, April 22, 2009
• Project Poster (PDF) May 1, 2009
• Project Poster, May 1, 2009