Wii Remotes...

[ArtOfWarfare]

Has anyone else tried using DarwiinRemote? It's a free program that lets you connect the motion sensing remotes for the nintendo Wii to your Mac.

It seems pretty cool but... I have no idea how to connect the sensor bar from my Wii. So I may end up trying candles instead... but that seems very unsafe... and I'm not so sure I want candles around my relatively new iMac.

Here's a link to where you can get DarwiinRemote.

And here's the link to the IGN video where I found you can just use candles instead of a sensor bar.

Although I suppose I could use this other sensor bar that is battery powered and so I don't have to plug it in:

http://gear.ign.com/articles/750/750908p1.html

but that costs money and I'm not so sure it's actually worth it.

I think I'm going to try playing WarCraft III using a wiimote... once I find a safe, cheap, convenient, IR source...

 

[atszyman]

If you google wii sensor bar power, there are lots of instructions on how to make the sensor bar wireless. It looks like a 9 V battery works for some, although I'd bet a 3.3V or 5V dc option would work as well.

New sensor bars are only $10 through Nintendo online so you can always get a new one cheap. Another method would be to just turn on the Wii and let it power the sensor bar. If the Wiimote is paired with you Mac then the Wii shouldn't do anything other than sit on the home menu....

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

I finally lived my dream!

Playing an RTS made by Blizzard... using the Wiimote!

Here's a video of clips spliced together. Most of it is in fastforward to compress the 30 minutes of footage I had into the 10 minutes allowed by YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2VExWWKJjo

For those interested...
I used two different iRobot Virtual Walls instead of a sensor bar (all I need is IR lights... these worked just fine,) because ours has been permanently attached to the TV. Then I used DarwiinRemote (a free program for Mac only, google it if you're interested... I downloaded it from MacUpdate.) You have to have bluetooth on your computer for the Wiimote to connect.

After I collected all that stuff, I just set the virtual walls to either side of the "foot" of my computer and turned them on. Then I launched DarwiinRemote, told it to search for Wiimotes, pressed 1 and 2 on the Wiimote, and I modified the preferences in DarwiinRemote so the buttons would be mapped to better handle WarCraft III. Then I turned off the accelerators on the Wiimote (no reason to waste power with that...), and turned on the IR motion tracking. I tweaked with the sensitivity a bit and then finally launched WarCraft III from the dock. I played a practice match against the computer (clips from that are the first minute of the YouTube video... I was the red orc.) Then I went onto battle.net, made a new account "UsingWiimote" (didn't want to mess up my normal account records,) and I played a 4v4. I ended up losing but the experience was fun anyways.

So, anyone else going to try something like this?

 

[martyrk]

Speaking of Wii remotes, check this out from youtube, absolutely amazing!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw&feature=related


And these kids are just probably doing this for a fun college thesis