[Orcnet] Wireless Presentation Pointer Thingie

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 01:36:23PM -0800, tim at wescottdesign.com wrote:
> I'm suffering from a lack of keywords.
> 
> Every year at the Embedded Systems Conference I give my talk(s), and I
> envy the folks who have the little combination wireless remotes and laser
> pointers who can advance their PowerPoint slides, point at the screen, and
> bounce around the room like demented fleas, all at one time.  I want to be
> like that too, dangit!
> 
> So -- what are those gizmos called?  Have you ever used one?  Do you have
> any recommendations?  Are those recommendations modified by the fact that
> I'm sliding into Loftstrum's Dementia and using Linux for my presentation
> machine?

This is a function of the remote that comes with the more modern computer
projectors.  This is on most newer InFocus projectors, such as most LP70
projectors resembling the one I have.  My particular projector is missing
the components, dammit.

The remotes use infrared control.  These either hit a sensor on the front
of the projector directly, or bounce off the screen to hit the sensor.
The projector then emulates a mouse feeding a USB port on the computer,
and sends left/right mouse clicks, which most modern presentation managers
understand as forward and back.  That includes OpenOffice on Linux/Windoze/Sun,
and probably recent versions of M$ and Apple products.

Note that OpenOffice on some laptops offers the additional advantage/drawback
of being able to show the full slide on the projector port, while showing
thumbnails on the laptop display.  They are still working the bugs out on
all this, BTW.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs