Nintendo Wii

Draft

Hardware

Wimote

• The Wii Remote or Wimote is one of the 2 standard video game controllers.
  • Wiimote (Wili) Overview for programmers.
  • Wiimote/Drivers List various drivers for various hardware
  • Wii Remote (Wikipedia)

The Wimote communicates through bluetooth. Its controller follows the Bluetooth Human Interface Device (HID) standard and is based on the USB HID standard.

It has

• 12 buttons
• A motion sensor
• An Infrared (IR) sensor (that gets input from the "sensor bar")

To use this with a computer, e.g. a Windows PC you need 3 things:

• A bluetooth adaptor card (on most laptops I think), else you can buy a cheap "Bluetooth dongle" that plugs into a USB slot.
• A driver on Windows (e.g. WiinRemote or GlovePie)
• Then in order to interface the controller with the bluetooth, you first put the controller into discoverable mode by either pressing the 1 and 2 buttons at the same time, or by pressing the red sync button under the battery cover.

Nunchuk

The Nunchuk is the other standard game controller. “It features an analog stick similar to the one found on the Nintendo GameCube controller and two trigger buttons. It works in tandem with the main controller in many games. Like the Wiimote, the Nunchuk controller also provides accelerometer for motion-sensing, but no rumble.” (Wiimote/Extension Controllers/Nunchuk, WiiLi, retrieved 16:46, 14 April 2008 (UTC)).

Classic Controller

• The Classic Controller is a more traditional gaming console gamepad.

Sensor Bar

• The Sensor Bar allows the Wii Remote to be used as an accurate pointing device up to 5 meters (approx. 16 ft) away from the bar.
  • Sensor Bar

Others

There are lots of other controllers and from third parties. E.g. guns, golf clubs, boxing gloves.

In education

There are edutainment games for the Wii (not discussed here).

Nintendo hardware can be repurposed. Most popular hacks seem to interface the video controllers with an other computer (Win/Mac/Linux) which is easy since they use a Bluetooth connection and then to write software for this (which is less easy). There exist several projects (see below)

But the most simple ways to profit from Wii is to write code for the Internet Channel and which is based on Opera. It's JavaScript implementation has extensions, e.g.

window.opera.wiiremote

Interesting projects

(not complete)

GlovePIE

GlovePIE is software (i.e. a Driver) to control Games with Gestures, Speech, and Other Input Devices! Among other hardware, it interfaces with Nintendo Wii Remote and Nunchuk.

• Wii Script is a website that includes a range of Wii Scripts based on GlovePie.

• WiiLi (Gnu/Linux port for the Nintendo Wii) has another collection of GlovePIE Scripts

Wiinremote

• Home. A Japanese library (driver and program).

DarwinRemote

• DarwiinRemote MacOSX driver and program that reads/sends data to Wii.

Wiimote project

(Johnny Chung Lee's projects)

• Descriptions
• Wiimote Wiki
• Wiimote Project (Forums)

Internet Channel

The Internet Channel (a modified Opera browser) connects through WIFI to the Internet. It supports the same web functionalities and standards that are included in the desktop versions of Opera, including CSS and JavaScript. On the other hand, it only seems to support Flash 7 (April 2008). This browser is not included when you buy the Wii. It will cost 500 Wii Points (about 5 Euros).

• Internet Channel at Opera]

• WiiCade is a website designed to provide users of the Wii console with online games. I.e. this uses the normal Wii hard and software and just adds Wii specific user events to online games that run in the built-in Opera (Internet Channel) browser.
  • WiiCade homepage
  • WiiCade (Wikipedia)

Links

Official sites

• http://wii.com/
• http://www.nintendo.com/wii

Overviews

• Wii (Wikipedia)

• Magic Wand: How Hackers Make Use Of Their Wii-motes, Wall Street Journal, April 28, 2007.

Website - Extending Wii hardware or software

(various contents, to sort out)

• Wii homebrew (Wikipedia overview) refers to the reuse of Nintendo's Wii game console hardware, accessories and software for purposes outside of those intended by the manufacturer. Key objectives are to provide open source tools to expand or alter the capabilities provided "out of the box".

• Wiihacks

• wiibrew.org

• Wiire.org (pictures with technical details)

• WiiLi Wii for Linux, but includes a lot of useful information + scripts for other systems.

• GlovePIE

• Internet Channel (Wikipedia). This is a version of the Opera 9 web browser for use on the Wii by Opera Software and Nintendo.