LinuxMCE Forums

General => Feature requests & roadmap => Topic started by: Someguynamedjoe on March 23, 2007, 06:53:36 pm

Title: Wii Remote Support
Post by: Someguynamedjoe on March 23, 2007, 06:53:36 pm
Given the rapidly increasing user base of the Wii, the motion sensors and overal good design of the Wii Remote, and its demonstrated tweakability, I can't imagine it would fail to become the de-facto standard control for LinuxMCE as soon as it can be supported.
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: arbrandes on March 24, 2007, 07:48:34 pm
I believe you could make this work without any official support from the LinuxMCE project, since the available Linux drivers make the Wiimote work as a standard mouse (as far as I know).
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: DrErling on April 04, 2007, 02:48:12 am
Since the Wii handcontroller is cheaper than the gyro-mouse featured in the youtube "LinuxMCE vs MSMCE" videos, this is a brilliant idea!

I'm a complete newbie to linux and this ubuntu 6.10+LinuxMCE is my first installation ever, so a wii-remote how-to would be much appreciated!

DrErling
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: robertsaron on April 09, 2007, 07:03:30 pm
There are wii remote Bluetooth drivers for linux. all you need is a Bluetooth adapter, you can pick one up off of new egg for 5$. then do a google search like I did for BT drivers for the wii remote. there is a site dedicated to these drivers. I have yet to install the drivers and test them, so I do not know how well work, according to the messageboards, there has been quite a lot of success for windows, OSX.
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: Hugolp on April 10, 2007, 12:45:27 am
Yes, I agree with you all about the wiimote. Actually tomorrow I am going to buy one to get it working with my linux machine. Ill post about it.

Hugo
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: sandos on April 10, 2007, 02:25:03 pm
A little note of warning: the IR in the wiimote seems to still not be supported in linux, and they are the ones who would allow for accurate pointing on the screen.
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: Highlander on April 11, 2007, 01:04:53 pm
A little note of warning: the IR in the wiimote seems to still not be supported in linux, and they are the ones who would allow for accurate pointing on the screen.

But the Wiimote doesn't have any "IR sending" capabilities, it has a digital IR camera for tracking the LED's on sensor bar, and the tracking is supported in cwiid linux driver.

You only have to build a sensor bar, i made mine from 6 IR LED's powered from USB to see if it works, and it works like a charm.
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: sandos on April 11, 2007, 01:47:16 pm
A little note of warning: the IR in the wiimote seems to still not be supported in linux, and they are the ones who would allow for accurate pointing on the screen.

But the Wiimote doesn't have any "IR sending" capabilities, it has a digital IR camera for tracking the LED's on sensor bar, and the tracking is supported in cwiid linux driver.

You only have to build a sensor bar, i made mine from 6 IR LED's powered from USB to see if it works, and it works like a charm.

Ok, cool, the page I found on the wiimote said the ir tracking was still not supported.
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: darrenmason on April 17, 2007, 01:32:56 am
Highlander,

Have you got it working with linuxMCE or just under linux?

It would be great if you could put a howTo together.

Regards
Darren
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: robertsaron on April 26, 2007, 11:21:44 pm
all the sensor bar does from what I have been told is for reporting the wii remote location. Which is why on the Wii, you set it to be below or above the TV. you can actually use candles as an IR, I saw the video on you tube or engadget. everything else is done by Bluetooth. The wii remote is nintendo's best controller yet, and the best controller on the market.
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: sp00nhead on May 18, 2007, 10:30:54 pm
Theres a guide here
http://www.wiili.org/index.php/Wiimote_linux_tutorial
I've just set up my machine, need to get a bluetooth adapter and should be getting a wii this weekend:)

i'll keep you posted
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: Naitsirk on July 20, 2007, 08:54:29 am
Hallois

Any update on the wiimote project?
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: sp00nhead on July 20, 2007, 06:11:05 pm
Update
Used the guide to get working fine on my ubuntu laptop.
Just need to load it up on my lmce machine. once i've done that i'll post some details on the wiki.
Also might need to mod the Gyro mouse plug in so the wii remotes buttons map to the correct buttons.

just got a old squeeze box of ebay to get up first
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: Naitsirk on July 21, 2007, 01:35:35 am
Alright, good news :)

Looking forward to your wiki update, please post a short message here as well to notify us that it's been updated ;)



Cheers!
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: Zaerc on July 25, 2007, 06:20:06 am
Well I got one today, and yes it not only works but is completely awesome as well.

I just followed sp00nhead's link: http://www.wiili.org/index.php/Wiimote_linux_tutorial with some aditional instructions here: http://www.wiili.org/index.php/WMD#Ubuntu and I had to apt-get the following to build the prerequisites (you might need more): libxosd-dev xosd-bin bluez-hcidump autoconf  automake python-xlib python-pygame also modifying the /etc/X11/xorg.conf is tricky as it seems to get overwritten a lot.

Seems to me there are only 2 things that need to be done to support the Wiimote plug and play:
1. Make debian packages out of the needed software (as far as that hasn't been done already).
2. Configure LMCE to recognize and configure it automaticly (already shows up, but as mobile phone).

I think I could manage the first, but I will need help with the second one from a more experienced veteran.  Would be really nice to just turn it on and select "Use this device as Wiimote" (or maybe something more general) and then light a few candles since you don't have a led-bar yet either.  ;)

Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: sp00nhead on July 25, 2007, 08:49:08 am
I'll have a look at the bluetooth autodetect software, see if we can mode it to fire off a diffrent event when a wii remote is detected, all it uses is MAC addresses of the bluetooth devices, re-building my dev machine at moment so might take abit.
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: sandos on July 25, 2007, 09:13:05 am
Sounds really cool. I will need to buy both a HTPC and a Wii soon ;)

Though i guess pairing the wiimote with the wii and PC is bothersome? I would have to switch over all the time?
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: Zaerc on July 25, 2007, 04:27:43 pm
I'll have a look at the bluetooth autodetect software, see if we can mode it to fire off a diffrent event when a wii remote is detected, all it uses is MAC addresses of the bluetooth devices, re-building my dev machine at moment so might take abit.

Cool, that would be great. The only thing wmd needs is a default config file with the MAC address of the controller specified in it.

I'll see how far I can get with making installable debian packages, looks like most of the pre-requisites already have (previous versions) packaged.  So apart from possibly having to update those, only libwiimote and wmd need to be debianified. 

It would be helpfull if someone could try whether it still works when using the following prebuild packages (ie. older versions) to fulfill the dependencies.  Just apt-get them along with the others and then only build libwiimote and wmd from the source.

matplotlib (used 0.90.1)
        python-matplotlib 0.87.7-0.3
        python-matplotlib-data 0.87.7-0.3
        python-matplotlib-doc 0.87.7-0.3 (likely not needed at all)

pyosd (used 0.2.14)
        python-osd 0.2.12-1.2

pybluez-src (used 0.9.2)
        python-bluez 0.9.1-1

libwiimote (used 0.42)
        libcwiimote-0.2

wmd (used 0.1.2)
        no .deb yet

Meanwhile I'll see what I can do to make .debs out of the last 2 missing pieces.

Sounds really cool. I will need to buy both a HTPC and a Wii soon ;)

Though i guess pairing the wiimote with the wii and PC is bothersome? I would have to switch over all the time?

I don't know as I only bought the remote, it was a lot cheaper without the console.   :)


EDIT: Added Ubuntu package name for libwiimote, and corrected python-matplotlib.

I have also tried a backported version (from gutsy) of cwiid packages but that only picked up the buttons and gave errors after a timeout on the rest of the sensors, maybe I'm doing something wrong there.

Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: gazlang on July 30, 2007, 12:39:00 pm
If I can get the wii remote working as a mouse with wmd in KDE will it not 'just work' in LMCE? or does LMCE work outside of kubuntu (and require its own device drivers)??
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: Zaerc on July 30, 2007, 04:47:15 pm
Well it seems that nobody minds untarring wmd by hand and starting it from the command-line everytime they want to use the wiimote, so I guess we're done here.
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: gazlang on July 30, 2007, 05:06:04 pm
Oh right, that aint for me then!

is there no way around having to install wmd everytime you reboot? run a cronjob?

I want a media center to control with a remote from my couch!
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: Zaerc on August 05, 2007, 06:00:30 pm
I guess, this: http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php/Plug%26play is what I was looking for. 

But I've already seen the WiiMote work so I'm going to mess with some other things first.
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: gazlang on August 09, 2007, 02:33:17 pm
Any progress on this front? ie. getting LMCE to recognise the wiimote as a remote and not having to run run wmd from konsole on every boot?

Found another useful howto for mythtv:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Controlling_MythTV_using_a_Wii_remote

which seems to allow the wiimote to start on boot:

'Make sure that the uinput module is loaded on system startup and your mythtv user has read access to the created device /dev/input/uinput. I added the following lines to /etc/rc.local

modprobe uinput
chmod a+r /dev/input/uinput'
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: Zaerc on August 09, 2007, 10:49:03 pm
Well I guess that is some progress, everyone else seems to have lost interest already.  The little bit I could figure out is already posted in this thread.  Like you I'm just throwing extra info in here that might be usefull, hoping that someone with the right skills and experience will come along and pick this up again.  It's likely going to be a while if I even ever get that far (especially considering how "helpfull" the people are that do know something aroud here), so I wouldn't wait for me to fix it if you know what I mean.
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: atreidae on September 02, 2007, 03:37:18 am
Ive been playing with cwiid, another wiimote interface, looks promising,
just working on getting uinput working atm.
does anyone know if uinput is enabled in 0704?
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: Zaerc on September 02, 2007, 05:05:50 am
Ive been playing with cwiid, another wiimote interface, looks promising,
just working on getting uinput working atm.
does anyone know if uinput is enabled in 0704?

Cool, I'm not sure what you mean by "enabled" but a simple "modprobe uinput" does the trick.  To automaticly have it loaded at boottime:
Code: [Select]
echo "uinput" >> /etc/modules
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: atreidae on September 03, 2007, 10:10:22 am
thanks for the update zarec,
I ended up finding the modprobe info with a bit of hunting in the cwiid wiki

spent hours trying to figure out why it worked in the test app, then stopped working when i tried to make it work for real, then stopped working in the test app, then hcitool stopped working.

damn dodgy bluetooth adapters

Ill post the packages i got it working with and maybe a keymap when i get home, got it working without the light bar too, however i assume the light bar will increase the accuracy of the mouse pointer dramaticly
 
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: Zaerc on September 03, 2007, 02:03:14 pm
Yeah, the light bar makes for accurate pointing at the screen.  Just light 2 candles on top of the TV and put them about 20 cm (8") apart, that works just as well for me.

Sounds like you're making pretty good progress there.  :)
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: gazlang on September 04, 2007, 11:09:22 am
I read that cwiid easily allows you to modify button functions.
Do you think it is possible to emulate the keyboard keys F5/F6/F7/F8 on the wiimote for LMCE media control?
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: cadman97 on November 03, 2007, 04:54:59 am
Any new development on this? Just getting started.
Title: Re: Wii Remote Support
Post by: gazlang on November 06, 2007, 11:32:19 am
Some Progress
see here> http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=2411.0