Make your own Balance Board (and be on your way to a Wii Fit)

Make your own Balance Board or BalanceTile (as we called it), as an interface for various games and physical fitness training, using I-CubeX technology. Design your own application and go way beyond the Wii Fit ! The video provides an overview and shows an application where your balance is used as a navigational control for a QuickTimeVR movie. It's actually really easy to use the BalanceTile as a musical controller because I-CubeX technology configures it into a MIDI controller by default.

Step 1 What you need

You will need the following items to complete this instructable:

1. 4 Contact pressure sensors, eg. the TouchMicro-10
2. Wooden MDF tile, approx. 1.5 x 1.5 ft x 3/8" (45 x 45 x 1 cm)
3. Sensor to computer interface (with configuration and mapping software), either wired or wireless:
a. Wireless sensor to computer interface, eg. the I-CubeX Wi-microDig (needs Bluetooth interface on the computer)
b. Wired sensor to computer interface, eg. the I-CubeX StarterPack combined with a MIDI interface such as the MIDISport 1x1
4. Computer

Comments

[matstermind]

what about sensors from an old electric bathroom scale?

[I-CubeX]

You are right, so the title has been corrected. We plan to expand the instructable to include more detailed info on making the Wii Fit part. Shouldn't be too hard ... perhaps it could be put together with the help of others here ? We could put it up that fast because we did this BalanceTile project last year so all the materials were there already. In fact we wonder if Nintendo is spying on us !

[msthursday]

That was very fast, but I was disappointed that there wasn't info for how to make the "fit" part of it. It might be more accurate to say this was a computer connected balance tile without Wii Fit.

[Crash2108]

That was fast...