[ExI] wii controllers

[Mike Dougherty]

2011/6/27 spike <spike66 at att.net>:
> I am so annoyed with myself for not having thought of this sooner.  Today I
> stuff.  For instance, if they are angular rate sensors in there, we could
> mount one on the handlebars and one on the axis of a motorcycle, take the
> signals off of both, write a Kalman filter script to control a single
> actuator, build a motorcycle that can ride itself.

Zen (and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) Koan:  Can a motorcycle be
made that can ride itself?

I propose: no.  for if it has a sense of self it cannot be a mere
motorcycle but without awareness of its own qualia it has no
appreciation of the ride.

> Questions please, instrumentation hipsters.  Does a Wii controller have
> double integrated accelerometers?  Or did they somehow figure out how to

Find the calibration screen.  You'll see a much more raw view of the
basic Wiimote functionality, there is basically two infrared dots on
the screen and your [counter-]clockwise rotation is their change in
relationship to the horizontal.  "Bowling" motion is a matter of the
up/down change in time.  The pool-cue detection is the distance
between the dots due to being closer/farther from the sensor bar.

Early games suffered from people not understanding this engineering
detail and pointing the IR sender in the wrong direction.  The newer
version has an accelerometer.  Probably something similar to the one
in an iPhone.  Between the IR/sensor bar, accelerometer+bluetooth(?)
the controller is a fairly accurate best-guess of orientation in
3-space.

> When I google on Wii controllers, all I get are sites trying to sell them.
> I have half a mind to cut one of these things open and see what kind of
> technology is in there, but I can imagine my son wouldn’t care for that
> idea.

go for it; they're not that expensive if you destroy it.  More likely
you'll get it apart, rewired and permanently allocated to whatever
application you invent.