Wiimote Hacking Goes Big-Time

The Wall Street Journal is taking Wiimote hacking seriously. A front-page article from this past weekend discusses the many uses to which enterprising hackers have put the Wiimote, the motion sensing piece of the Wii console. Included is a video of a few of the projects in action. "Tim Groeneboom, who lives in the Netherlands, uses his Wii-mote to spice up his deejay act. He was inspired by a video on the Web of a California music student bobbing in front of the computer in his room and making jabbing motions with the Wii-mote to splice different tracks. During his second gig with the Wii-mote, Mr. Groeneboom, 22, says he was able to roam up to about 100 feet from his deejay booth and still be able to control how the music blended and do some sound effects ... Aaron Rasmussen has a sporting purpose for his Wii-mote. At his Garden Grove, Calif. software company, USMechatronics, he and his partner stuck a tennis racket in the 'hand' of a $40,000 industrial robot and then tweaked the Wii-mote to control the robot's arm so it can hit back tennis balls on the factory floor. 'This is what we do to relax,' he says."

Power Glove?

I am absolutely dying for someone (nintendo maybe even) to make a glove with a wii remote on each finger and thumb. Imagine the possibilities for interaction with a 3D environment with this. You'd be able to grasp things in the 3D space of your game, and your hands position could be tracked more accurately than any other device of a similar type has before. It would be an expensive piece of hardware, but I'd buy it if I could grasp a ball and throw it to another player in a networked game of... something where you throw balls at other players. It doesn't matter! It'd be great.

Re:Power Glove?

That could be cool, but keep in mind that the WiiMote has two modes -- accellerometer mode and infrared pointing mode.

Accellerometer mode is useful for things like shaking, tilting, and swinging. Sadly, it has almost nil information for determining where in space something actually is -- only how it's moving, and to back-extrapolate position from motion data is highly inaccurate.

The way Wiimotes get highly sensitive positioning data for things like aiming and driving is by using the secomd mode, whihc is the infrared sensor mode. This only works when the Wiimote is pointing at a dual infrared source (the "sensor bar" that hangs out by your TV). So if you point the Wiimote at the floor, the Wii has very little idea of how your Wiimote is actually oriented.

So what all this mumbo jumbo means for your PowerWiiGlove is that you would have to use accellerometer mode, and that it would make your glove highly inaccurate for detecting sensitive motion (such as manipulating VR objects). Your idea is highly feasible (especially with the advancements in small accellerometers that the Wiimote uses), but just not with the accellerometer configuration present in the existing Wiimote. In other words, your idea is good, but sit on it until Wii 2.0 comes out.

--clint

Re:Power Glove?

Well, thanks to gravity, the accelerometers can do a pretty decent job of determining the orientation (roll and pitch) of a static Wiimote. That's actually how most of the driving games work: you handle the Wiimote as if it's the crossbar in a steering wheel, and the current degree of tilt to either side controls the steering.

I imagine for a glove controller you could get a reasonable amount of information about a hand gesture from that; the lack of yaw data is a limiting factor.

Re:Power Glove?

You're exactly right about gravity being used to calculate pitch/roll. This is what I used when I made a rag-doll physics simulator for my Wiimote [sourceforge.net]. Sadly though, in order to be accurate, determining pitch/roll completely from the accellerometers [wiili.org] must assume that there is no linear accelleration of the controller itself. In most cases, this works fine for relatively imprecise things like driving, but I'm just a little concerned when there is a lot of precise movement involved (such as in a hand).

However, as I'm thinking about it now, I guess the original idea isn't too bad. The basic solution is that you would have to have a Wiimote mounted on each bone in the simulated hand (one for the palm, 3 for each finger, 2 for the thumb, so 15 Wiimotes for a whole hand). Then for each bone, obtain the angle, then just use simple vector addition to get the relative positions for each of the joints. However, this still leaves you with the quandry that you have no idea where in space your hand is located, or if there is any yaw (left to right twisting), and you're back to needing a static reference point like the IR sensor bar. In other words, you would have a very accurately simulated human hand that would be correct as long as it wasn't accellerating, and it wouldn't let you simulate anything from the wrist-up. If you mounted 2 more Wiimotes to the player (one to the forearm, and one to the bicep), then you could have shoulder-down reproduction, and that would give you some decent control to pick up objects (again, just in a plane, since the Wiimotes could not detect yaw for the arm to turn from right-to-left).

I guess now all we need is some smart-guy to strap about 13 Wiimotes to his body and use the vector addition to make a simple stick-figure of himself dance around on the screen. :) It wouldn't be nearly as accurate as standard motion-capture tools (since the pitch/roll angle calculations are so limited by assuming zero linear accelleration), but it would be accurate enough to make a cool YouTube video and get posted on Slashdot. :)

Re:

Just so you know, the "IR sensor bar" isn't actually a sensor bar -- it's really just a dual high-output infrared source. Basically two infrared LEDs that give the Wiimote an absolute reference point. The infrared receiver is actually in the Wiimote itself

Re:

Which is why such a system would turn on only one IR bar at once, doing the math to determine when one IR bar is going out of range.

Aaah, okay. I didn't understand that part of your comment at first, but now I see what you mean. So it sounds like you would only want one of the dozen-or-so Wiimotes to actually have IR sensing turned on, and all of the other positions are just extrapola

Re:

I'd buy it if I could grasp a ball and throw it to another player in a networked game of... something where you throw balls at other players.

...I really need to get my mind out of the gutter.

Re:

You mean like this?

P5 Virtual Reality Glove [vrealities.com]

This is the same device used in "Minority Report". It's been around for quite some time, and it has a few patches for games as well. Specifically, it worked with "Black & White". I never actually used it, b

odd question

Does anyone know if the new dongle from MSFT that allows you to use a wireless 360 controller on the PC can sync a wii remote to the PC?

Re:

Nope. But, a good old-fashioned Bluetooth dongle (just about any of them) will do the job just fine, as well as work with just about anything else Bluetooth.

Wiimote on the PS3?

The Wiimote is bluetooth, the PS3 controllers are bluetooth, why don't we have bowling and boxing, using the Wiimote, on the PS3? I mean, there is a driver for Linux to use the Wiimote, and the PS3 runs Linux, so...

The Wiimote and the games that use it are really the only part of the Wii that are at all interesting. The console itself is not that good, it's basically PS-2 generation horsepower and video. So why don't we have titles that support the option of using a Wiimote with the PS3?

Now, the PS3 has enough horsepower, and the Wii has little enough, that I wonder how hard it would be to build a Wii emulator for the PS3. Who would support this effort? How about the games companies who aren't selling anywhere near their potential because people like me haven't been able to get a console for the last 5 months? Seems like they'd have a pretty stong incentive...

I say this in part because in December I was quite hot to get a Wii, specifically for this set of holiday parties we have. However, I've seen a Wii in the stores *ONCE* since November. At the time (January) I thought "Oh, the supply problems are over", but I haven't seen them in the stores since then.

Sean

Re:

What part of the world are you in? In the philadelphia/delaware area in the US, I've seen remotes at best buy, target, and walmart almost every time I've checked since March. I finally broke down and bought WiiPlay which comes with a remote (basically a

Re:

the console itself is not that good, it's basically PS-2 generation horsepower and video.

Two nitpicks. One is the PS2 had the lowest horsepower and video of the last generation. Second is I am beginning to suspect this is not quite true. When playing W

Re:

Linux on the PS3 works with framebuffer video, because Sony locked down the GPU.

I don't think this'll change.

So, really, the Wii is pretty tempting, and anyway, it's powerful enough to run interesting games. It's a lot more powerful than the PS2; even the

Re:

Enh. I bought one yesterday, after seeing [crayz.org] that they were all over the Targets in the North Dallas area. According to that, there's still several to be had the day after...I was the last of my group of friends who wanted one to get one, and its largely be

Yeah, right

I loved this line from TFA, regarding Chris Hughes controlling his Roomba with a Wiimote: "She's hoping the invention means the house will now stay cleaner."

Be sure to let us know how that works out.

Two handed clutch

It would be neat if you could hold a wimote in each hand as if you are holding a pair of tongs (or poles, or chopsticks), and pick things up. Like a UFO catcher type game, or lots of things.

Re:

While not quite what you were looking for, I believe that Godfather: Blackhand Edition has something similar.

Review from Console Gameworld [gwn.com]

Both fists are mapped to the Wii remote and nunchuck so if you hold down the Z Button and thrust forward with your

Re:

I think the point of the title was that Wii-most hacking is being covered by 'big-time' media. (WSJ) But what do I know, I just used common sense.

Re:Oh yes...

But what do I know, I just used common sense.

Hey now, this is Slashdot. We can't have people like you ruining it for the rest of us...

How's this for "big time"

A friend of mine is using Wii controllers as touch-feedback UAV controllers for his research. Apparently it's way cheaper than putting together a Bluetooth device with accelerometers yourself.

Re:See ....

Nah, this is what happens when the only piece of Wii hardware you can find is the controller.

Re:

Nah, this is what happens when the only piece of Wii hardware you can find is the controller

Dude, the last three times I went by BestBuy they were out of wiimotes :( I have no idea how they're selling out of wiimotes when it's still nearly impossible to

Re:

Well, the Wii only comes with two remotes and one nun-chuck, so a lot of folks are buying two additional remotes and one (or more ) additional nun-chucks. (Passing two remotes between 4 players during a session of late-night drunken bowling sucks)

Hobgoblins

Mike: You know, AC, you do know Wiis exist. Now what about Pearl's?

Anonymous Coward: ... OK, so one Wii exists. That means all Wii exist?

Mike: We'll be right back.

Anonymous Coward: Name me one other Wii owner.

Mike: Well I can... um....