MassiveBoard V1.

1
Quick Start Guide
September 2009

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction to MassiveBoard................................................................................3
2. MassiveBoard Pre-Requisites................................................................................4
3. Starting MassiveBoard...........................................................................................6
4. MassiveBoard Features.........................................................................................8
4.1. Drawing on MassiveBoard..................................................................................8
4.2. Changing MassiveBoard Line Colours...............................................................9
4.3. Changing MassiveBoard Line Widths..............................................................10
4.4. Erasing MassiveBoard Lines............................................................................11
4.5. Re-Sizing MassiveBoard..................................................................................12
4.6. Erase the Current Drawing from MassiveBoard...............................................15
4.7. Taking MassiveBoard Snapshots.....................................................................16
4.8. Loading Existing MassiveBoard Images..........................................................17
4.9. Load Your Own Images into MassiveBoard.....................................................19
4.10. The MassiveBoard Scratchpad.....................................................................19
4.11.
MassiveBoard Drawing Guidelines...............................................................20
4.12. Hiding MassiveBoard....................................................................................23
4.13. The About Box...............................................................................................23

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1. Introduction to MassiveBoard
MassiveBoard provides you with a huge electronic whiteboard. Hence the use of the
name MassiveBoard for the application. It was designed with the Wiimote in mind
and so is intended to be used with a very simple input device. You can still use the
mouse to drive the application but it should be possible to everything with just the
Wiimote and an IR pen.
The application is a simple whiteboard application called MassiveBoard intended for
use by presenters and teachers.
Major benefits of MassiveBoard include:
The ability to work on a whiteboard bigger than your screen. It is a variable
sized whiteboard up to sixteen times the size of screen.
Designed with the Wiimote and IR Pen in mind. I.e. A simple input device of IR
Pen with one button
A light weight and simple interface compared with other whiteboard and paint
software
The ability to take screen snapshots and reload them at anytime using the
very simple MassiveBoard preview panel. Snapshots of your drawings can be
images of the screen as you see it in front. Alternatively, you can take a
snapshot of just your drawing. Drawing snapshots, of course, can be larger
than the screen if you have re-sized MassiveBoard.
The ability to load up any image as a starting point, not just images you have
drawn using the software. Simply drop them into the snapshots sub-directory
and load them using the MassiveBoard preview panel.
Illustrate working software using the scratchpad. The scratchpad provides a
transparent screen that you can draw on top of to highlight the use of other
software.
My handwriting tends to slope downwards when writing on the board so I
have included a feature that puts guidelines on the screen vertically and/or
horizontally. These can be included in the drawing snapshots or not as you
like.
A single Jar file deployable using OneJar. No more separate dependencies
thanks to Simon Tuffs at http://one-jar.sourceforge.net/

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2. MassiveBoard Pre-Requisites
This is not a Wiimote controller program.
You need to have a Wiimote controller program installed before beng able to use this
application with an IR pen. You can install one of the following to get this to work.

Uwe Schmidts software (http://www.uweschmidt.org/)

Johnny Chung Lees software (http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/)

You may also be able to find other implementations of Wiimote controller programs.
MassiveBoard assumes that you already have the Wiimote set up and calibrated and
that you have a compatible IR pen to use with it.
MassiveBoard is written in Java and as such you need to have Java installed.
MassiveBoard currently takes advantage of the Java6u10 transparency features so
this is the baseline for full functionality. It should still work with earlier versions of
Java 6, but you will not get a transparent scratchpad.
Future versions of MassiveBoard may take advantage of the Java JNA project to
provide native transparency and the ability to run the code in Java VMs back to
1.4.2.
You can download Java from Sun. This following link will take you directly to the Java
6u16 download, which, is the latest version. Download and install it in the same way
as you would any other application.
https://cds.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/CDS-CDS_DeveloperSite/en_US/-/USD/ViewProductDetail-Start?ProductRef=jdk-6u16-othJPR@CDS-CDS_Developer
To check which version of Java you have installed, if any, you open a command
prompt and type
"java -version".
If Java is installed you should see some information displayed about the version you
have. If you don't see anything or you see an error then you don't have Java
installed.

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So, that's the first thing we need to do. You should see something like the following
with 1.6.0_XX. Try to make sure that XX is a number that is at least 10 and if not
use the link above to upgrade. It should not break any of your existing applications.

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3. Starting MassiveBoard
After checking the pre-requisites you have everything you need. Open a command
prompt and navigate to the directory where you have downloaded the file
MassiveBoard-<version>.jar
and type:
java -Xmx1024m -jar MassiveBoard-<version>.jar <press enter>

If you are not comfortable with starting programs on the command line then an
executable has been provided as part of this project (as a separate download). This
executable can launch MassiveBoard for you. You can either do this on the
command prompt (see below) or just find MassiveBoard.exe in Windows Explorer
and double click it. NB This is a Windows executable only at the moment.

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If all goes well you should see a screen that looks like the following.

Nothing spectacular, but you are done. Enjoy, try just playing around or read on for
more details of each feature. You can see a blank window that you can draw on with
your mouse/IR Pen and also an Options button that we will talk about later.
One thing to note now, however, is that the controls in this program only rely on you
pressing the button on the pen or holding the left mouse button down, to activate
features. E.g. To see the menu, simply press the pen button over the Options button
or hold down the mouse button on it. There is no need to single click or double click.

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4. MassiveBoard Features
This section describes all of the features of the MassiveBoard V1.1 application.

4.1. Drawing on MassiveBoard

This is the easy bit. You can already draw. When MassiveBoard starts up it is
automatically started in a drawing mode of operation. Simply press and hold the
button down on the IR Pen being used with the Wiimote and move it around.
Alternatively, a mouse can be used to try out some drawing.

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4.2. Changing MassiveBoard Line Colours

Press the IR pen button over the Options button. This displays the main
MassiveBoard menu. To select a colour press the pen button over the Choose Pen
Colour menu item.
A menu will then be presented with the colours to choose from. By default you can
choose one of the pre-set colours or you can choose any colour from the palette by
pressing the pen down over the More colour menu item.

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4.3. Changing MassiveBoard Line Widths

In a similar way to the way in which pen colours are chosen it is also possible to
choose a different pen width.

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4.4. Erasing MassiveBoard Lines

As mentioned earlier, when MassiveBoard starts up it is automatically started in the
drawing mode of operation. To swap to the erase mode of operation so that you can
erase lines simply choose the Toggle Pen/Eraser menu item from Options menu. If
you are in the drawing mode it will swap to erase mode and vice versa.

You can now use the mouse/pen to erase any lines. It actually just draws lines in the
background colour and width over the top of old ones. What this means is that you
can control the width of erases by choosing different pen widths whilst in erase
mode.
To swap back to drawing mode again simply choose the Toggle Pen/Eraser menu
item from the Options menu.

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4.5. Re-Sizing MassiveBoard

Now you find out why its called MassiveBoard. Unlike most whiteboard software you
are not restricted by the size of the projected image. If you need a bit more space
you can have itand a lot of it. MassiveBoard gives you a surface area to work on
that is 16 times the size of the screen you are using. One bad habit I am in is
drawing up to the edge of the white board and then finding I need a bit more space
but have no whiteboard left.
E.g. Imagine having drawn the following:

You can choose the Toggle Draw/Drag menu item to swap from drawing mode
dragging mode. Once you are in dragging mode you can use the IR pen or mouse
to drag the whiteboard image around. Initially, the whiteboard image is the same size
as the screen. However, as you drag the image around the whiteboard is resized on
demand.

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Choosing the Toggle Draw/Drag Board menu item will give you a different mouse
cursor. I.e.The crosshair which allows you to move the board when holding down the
pen/mouse.

So if I drag to the left I would have something like this:

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I now have the space I need to add to my picture. I can toggle back to drawing
mode to carry on drawing by simply choosing Toggle Draw/Drag Board again.
If I need to view any part of the image, simply choose Toggle Draw/Drag Board
again and move the image around. When you save the drawing (see later) it will
save everything you have drawn in newly re-sized image. Not just what you can see
on screen.

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4.6. Erase the Current Drawing from MassiveBoard

If you simply want to start again and blank out the entire current drawing then
choose the Erase Board menu item. As always, with these things, save the image if
you are not sure. You can always re-load it again later. It costs nothing to do this so
better safe than sorry.

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4.7. Taking MassiveBoard Snapshots

If you want to save the drawings there are two options. Screen Snapshot and
Drawing Snapshot.

A screen snapshot will take a screenshot of everything you can see in front of you.
A drawing snapshot will save an image of all of the lines you have drawn and the full
size of the drawing (which may be larger than the size of the screen if you have
resized the drawing.
All images are saved in JPG format so you should be able to load them into any
other program you like afterwards.
Drawing snapshots are saved with the file naming convention drawing<x>.jpg
and screen snapshots are saved with the file naming convention screen<x>.jpg.
Where <x> is a number starting at 1 and up to max size if integer (if you get that far
you are in more serious trouble with organization than running out of integer range
space).
The images are saved in a directory called snapshots under the current working
directory. So, if you launch the application from e.g. c:\apps\massiveboard then you
should find all of the images in c:\apps\massiveboard\snapshots. The application will
automatically create the snapshots directory if it does not already exist.

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4.8. Loading Existing MassiveBoard Images

You can load a previously saved screen or drawing snapshot at any time using the
Load Snapshot menu item.

If you have no images currently saved then nothing will happen when you click this
menu item. If you have some images in the snapshots directory then you will be
presented with a browser to choose one.

Simply click on the image you are interested in and it will be loaded. If you have lots
of images then you can scroll up and down to view the thumbnails.
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NB The application can cope with a lot of images in this directory but as with
anything, keep it organized. Delete what you dont need (not a feature in the
application you have to find them in Windows Explorer and delete them as you
would with any file in Windows). I anticipated this feature being used to take
snapshots to be using in documentation or to refresh memories of designs, not really
as a huge store of images.
If you decide that you dont really want to load an image or that you just wanted to
browse what you had then you can close the image browser by clicking on the
message at the top of the browser

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4.9. Load Your Own Images into MassiveBoard

You can add any images into the snapshots directory if you want to load up your
own images with the following conditions. The images have to be JPG, GIF, PNG or
BMP. The application will then find the image the next time you load the image
browser.

4.10.The MassiveBoard Scratchpad

This allows you to toggle to a transparent window that allows you to see what is
happening underneath MassiveBoard. You can use this to illustrate existing
applications.

Now you should see a transparent window.

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Which you can draw on top of

You can toggle back and forth between the whiteboard and the scratchpad and the
application will remember what you drew on each board and preserve those
drawings.
NB The scratchpad is intended to be a view of whatever you have on screen under
the whiteboard. So, I decided that it did not make sense to be able to resize this
whiteboard. You can still however choose the Toggle Draw/Drag menu item. I will fix
this at a later date. Just be aware of this if you think that you are not able to draw on
the scratchpad it may be that you have toggled to drag mode. Since drag mode does
nothing on the scratchpad you will experience nothing happening at all.

4.11. MassiveBoard Drawing Guidelines

As mentioned, I cant draw straight. So you have guidelines to help. You can turn
them on and off at will without effecting your pictures.
You can toggle horizontal and vertical guidelines using the options menu as follows:

Which will look like this

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And toggle back off

You can use horizontal and/or vertical guidelines as you need.

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4.12. Hiding MassiveBoard

Sometimes you want to use other applications so you can hide the whiteboard by
choosing Hide Massive Board on the menu.

This simply hides the application window. The application is still active and you
should see it in your taskbar.

You can click on the icon (no right click needed) to bring back MassiveBoard.

4.13.The About Box

Extra Information is available about the application in an about box. This is mainly for
debugging and help purposes.
I have a domain called IntellectFactory and tend to use it for all of my play software
just in case I ever decide to do anything more with it. Its not in any way commercial
and this software is free and without restrictions.

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Enjoy!
Contact me on one of the following
garyj@gjones1.demon.co.uk
garyj@intellectfactory.com
Gary

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