DescentBB

Build an Infrared light.
In order to use the Nintendo Wiimote correctly you must have an infrared light source shining from the monitor's location. This can easily be done by buying the battery powered wireless “sensor”. But these can cost about $8 to $13 at the store and will require batteries. What I wanted was a USB IR LED. I was able to for about $6 by breaking open a usb led laptop light and switching out the LED for the infrared LED. It took me about 15 minutes from start to finish and I have no prior experience with soldering. After testing it I protected each exposed section with electric tape and slapped on some duct tape to make it a bit stronger. Important note: I did have to steal the resistor off the original LED and solder it back on.




I did go out and buy $18 worth of parts to build a battery powered version. It would have been fun but now I'm going to return most of these things to the store. I will keep the soldering gun since I really like it and will use it to build other custom parts.

Nice work!

Thanks supersheep!

does it track properly with a single LED?

Perfectly. In fact I just read that the wiimote works fine with just a lit candle. I haven't tried this though.

Wait, what are you doing with the wiimote, again?

Using it as a mouse for a computer that's being used as a tv/dvd player.

Interesting. Using a wireless mouse and/or remote seems to work just fine for my media PC. What's the advantage of using the Wiimote?

I read something similar on technews I think it was a few weeks ago. Using your Wii Remote as a TV Remote.

Foil wrote:Interesting. Using a wireless mouse and/or remote seems to work just fine for my media PC. What's the advantage of using the Wiimote?

Cheap and no need for a surface.

Grendel wrote:Cheap and no need for a surface.

bingo

We quickly found out it was hard to use a mouse on a couch. So we bought a little rolly table but no one liked that either. We wanted something like the logitech air mouse but much cheaper. The wiimote seems to work better and there's lots of documentation on re-mapping all the buttons. And with the raido bluetooth connection the buttons all still work anywhere in our apartment.

1. Do you have a link to documentation about the implementation? I.E. you need a software & hardware interface to your computer, right?

2. I bought a windows MCE remote w/ a USB receiver & it works pretty well.

some shrink tubing around those solder joints might be a good idea to reduce strain.

A little too late for the shrink tubing or the project box….

But, you could still cut the connections………

[quote="snoopy"]1. Do you have a link to documentation about the implementation? I.E. you need a software & hardware interface to your computer, right?/quote]

Yeah there's all kinds of software to make it work. I know there's one for windows. I'm using ubuntu with it. The software part was pretty straight forward.