This section was created to house the nintedo wii/AJAX hack I'm working on with
John. Hopefully it will expand if nintendo ever actually
releases a full wii homebrew kit and I can afford it. There's also some miis down below...
wiiToX
Status:
Check out the video, now with audio.
Tested and working great on the wii. Still some small kinks (mentioned below). Security issues
have been improved by switching from a posted script to a user-run custom webserver of sorts.
Description:
John idly mentioned that it'd be nice to control his mouse
with the wii remote. I suggested that this could be accomplished through capturing mouse
movement/input through the wii's version of the Opera browser via javascript.
The original version (then called wiiJAXD) was a php script I wrote that either printed out a page
with some input-capturing javascript, or passed given input parameters on to xautomation to control
the local input. This required opening a variety of security holes in one's system and was more of
a proof-of-concept.
For the newest version, John wrote a user-run perl script that listens on port 2345, spitting out a page with
the input capture javascript, and passing on given input to a single socket connection with xautomation.
Lest we suggest otherwise, there are
other known
ways
to use the wii remote as a mouse. Our way is kind of elegant and interesting, and still works.
What to do:
This principles above could certainly work for lots of setups, but to use what I'm providing, I'm
just going to assume that you're running linux. That is, at this point xautomation is required, but
the code could be customized to call some simillar input control utility on a windows system...
Here's what to do:
- You will need a fast connection to your wii. That is, you should either go through a usb lan adapter or an un-encrypted wireless connection. Encryption seems to create a bottleneck that will freeze input periodically.
- Set the wii browser menu bar to hide when you hit "1", and the zoom to "auto". If you don't have these options, you haven't upgraded your browser, which might just make all this work better...
- On the wii remote, press '1' to hid the menu bar and press '2' to get past the message that tells you what that button does.
- Install xautomation, which is called from the command line as 'xte' to control the machine in question.
- Download wiitox.pl, run 'perl wiitox.pl [options]' and point your wii's browser to the ip address/port that it tells you to.
- If you're running a firewall, open up port 2345 (or your custom port number) to tcp.
- You should be contoling the mouse via the wii remote now. Move to the 4 corners of the wii screen to calibrate.
- You can now dive into the source to turn on text monitoring or to customize the key mappings. A little more on this is in the README.
Script Download:
wiitox_1.0.0.tar.gz
Known Issues
- This has been tested primarily on a wii with the first major browser update installed and a box running Fedora Core 6. If you experience any issues with this setup, or some other linux dist, or if some new wii browser update breaks things, feel free to email me. I use that google mail thing, you know the one, as alex.sheive.
- Due to scrolling within the browser, the B button and D pad up/down can change your mouse position somewhat.
- We don't even use '+' becase it zooms in and really messes with the mouse position.
- Sometimes getting to the edge of the screen is a little tough due to input ending at the edge of the wii browser. Basically you just can't get to the very edge in a hurry. Some future version will correct this somewhat by adding buffer zones at the edges.
- There is a lack of input resolution due to scaling the wii's display to whatever your desktop size is. This might make it hard to pinpoint small buttons. You can always drop your resolution if this is an issue...
- If you haven't pressed '2' before, it will tell you what it does and make you click 'OK', so do that once before proceeding. Also hide the menu bar by pressin '1'. (I said both of these above, weren't you listening?)
- Does this mean I can use the wii remote in [some game]?. Unfortunately, the answer is probably "not so much... yet." Most games that rely on the mouse don't just grab the normal mouse desktop position. Thus our calls to reposition the mouse seem to usually be treated as "put the mouse in the bottom right corner." This can probably be dealt with, but it'd probably be on a game-by-game, or at least game-engine-by-game-engine, basis. We may look into this soon, feel free to do so yourself.
Miis
Description:
Miis are little customizable avatars that hook into some of the games for the wii.
People are doing some creative crap with them. If only to fill out the
page, here's a few I've made:
The Aqua Teens.
Yes Guy from the Simpsons.