The Wiimote, which I also wrote about here: 2007-12-15/wiimote-ultimate-hackers-toy, provides the perfect (and cheapest) platform for bluetooth connectivity with a PC, as well as useful sensors such as an infrared camera and tilt sensors. Check out the project page for updates: Wiimote Warrior – Wiimote Robotics Project.

When I first read about the Wiimote and all the hacks people already made for it, I knew I had to obtain one for myself. However, if you’re buying one in South Africa you could pay up to R500 for this puppy. There was no way I was dishing that out for a remote, so I turned to eBay, where you can pick one up for between R175-R210. I ordered one from thumbmonkey.com, international shipping only $10 (Only twice what kalahari charges for local deliveries.) and it arrived after three weeks, only one week late (Thanks ZA post office!).

Here’s a couple of its features:

• • 3-axis accelerometer to determine orientation (A Wiimote can replace those R4000+ 3-axis sensors they use at industrial engineering for measuring orientation)
  • PixArt optical infrared sensor to determine position. (Use Wiimote as an accurate pointing device)
  • Force feedback/vibration control. (Ladies?)
  • Built-in speaker. (Voice commands/confirmations, finding a lost remote.) Controlling this feature is still not fully understood. Much potential for discovery and contribution.
  • A programmable EEPROM chip for configuration data.
  • And perhaps most excitingly, wiimote extensions like the Nunchuck uses a standard I2C interface, so you can create your own Wiimote peripherals. Better yet, you can use the Wiimote as a cheap and simple bluetooth adapter for your own electronic development boards.

So, the second I popped some batteries in, I connected it to my laptop and started coding. I grabbed Brian Peek’s C# Wiimote library off the net. Within about an hour, I wrote a little application that sits in the system tray and binds Wiimote actions to keyboard keypresses. It lets you control VLC by waving the remote around. Waving it left/right skips the video forward/back. The further you rotate, the faster it skips. Waving it up/down controls the volume, and otherwise it just does basic operations like play/pause/fullscreen/task-switch/mute.

I will probably release it as a full-scale Wiimote app at a later stage once I’ve cleaned everything up, but for now I will just lie back, put on a good movie, and enjoy the ultimate in lazy-man’s bliss.