Basically, all we want to do here is get some infrared on your face so you can do some head-tracking.  The easiest way to do this is to grab your Wii sensor bar, hold it up to your forehead (or mount it to a hat), and turn on the Wii console.  In this tutorial, we will be dealing with a specific brand of LED glasses, for the easiest, cheapest solution for sturdy, adjustable, switch-operated IR glasses. The whole set-up will cost you about $20.

What you need:

-LED Light Vision V2 Safety Glasses

We purchased these through Amazon.com for about $12.  These goggles are the perfect solution, mainly because of the independent battery-operated switches for the LEDs.  This saves you from the ugly mess of wiring individual LEDs to a battery holder and soldering the contacts.

- 5mm Infrared LEDs (2)

These can be purchased at any RadioShack.  Each LED will run you about $2.

Here’s what the packages for the infrared LEDs and glasses look like:

If your items don’t look like this you’ve done something wrong.  My glasses included a bonus ninja mask, I’m wearing it right now!

(the bonus is actually a nice little case for the glasses)

Tools you’ll need to replace the LEDs:

-A small screwdriver, about the size you would need for glasses screws (it is possible that you might need a slightly larger screwdriver as well for 2 other screws)

-Scissors (or a wire cutter, to shorten one of the LED leads)

-Camera (cell phone camera works fine)

Here is a close-up picture of the screws, to give you an idea of the size:

Let’s do this

Step 1:

Unscrew the gold screw that attaches the switch to the glasses frame. BE CAREFUL. These screws tend to strip easily.  If the screw is not giving, I would recommend keeping the switch attached to the glasses (you can unscrew the glasses hinge to make things more manageable).

Step 2:

Unscrew the 3 small silver screws and remove the bottom of the switch.

The inside should look like this:

The lead on top of the battery is called the Anode (+) lead.  You are going to have to bend the anode lead on your IR LED to look something like this, we’ll get to that in a bit.

Step 3:

Bend the lead upward so you can remove the two batteries. Set them aside for now.

As you can see, the Cathode (-) lead of the LED runs under a piece of plastic at the bottom of the switch:

While the switch is in the off position, the end of the lead is not exposed to the bottom of the battery.  If you watch the lead while you turn the switch on, you’ll see that it lifts up above the plastic, making contact with the battery.  You are now a switch genius.

Step 4:

The LED should lift out of the holder pretty easily.  Go ahead and take it out, but DON’T throw it away yet.  Straighten the cathode (shorter) lead as much as you can, you are going to have to cut the cathode lead of the IR LED to this EXACT length.  Take your IR LED out of the package, set it down next to the regular LED so that both shorter ends are next to each other and follow the diagram below.

Be very careful when you cut the lead…

-If you cut it too short, the lead will never make contact with the battery in the ON or OFF position.

-If you leave it too long, the lead will make contact in both the ON and OFF position.

Step 5:

Now we are going to do everything we just did, but backwards.  When the IR cathode lead is successfully shortened, unscrew the plastic piece inside the switch.  Run the cathode lead through the center opening of the plastic piece and position the head of the LED in the holder.

Now screw the plastic piece back in, make sure the cathode lead is still running through the opening.  Test the switch to see if the lead is below the plastic in the OFF position and above the plastic in the ON position.

Step 6:

Put the batteries back in, positive sides UP.  Bend the anode lead so that it rests nicely on top of the batteries and is not sticking out over any edges.  Now you can test to see if the switch is working.  BUT WAIT, you can’t see infrared with your human eyes…remember the camera I said you would need?  Turn the switch on and press the anode lead to the batteries and hold it up to a camera.

If you see a whitish-blueish light, you’ve done well.  Don’t forget to test it in the off position too.  If the light is still on while the switch is off, you need to cut the cathode lead a little shorter.  When the switch is working, proceed.

Step 7:

Screw the switch back together and test it again.  Then, reattach it to the goggles. Test it again. Go to Step 1 and do the other side.

Please leave any comments or questions, we’ll be happy to help. Check back soon for our video tutorial.

A little about head-tracking and Fourmation:

As I said in the beginning of this tutorial, you can easily experience head-tracking by putting a Wii sensor bar on a hat and turning on your Wii.  You can watch Johnny Lee’s demonstration here, and learn how to do it here.  For our game, Fourmation, there will be two sets of infrared input and two Wiimotes.  The first set is the IR glasses, that track your head in 3-D space.  A Wiimote positioned under the monitor reads the values of these infrared points in space and sends them to the computer.  Then, we take these values and produce an effect that is very much like turning your monitor into a window. The other set of IR input is the sensor bar on top of the monitor and the Wiimote in your hand.  The IR camera in the Wiimote calculates the positions of the IR lights in the sensor bar and finds itself in space.