Wii Remote Support

[sp00nhead]

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.

[sandos]

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?

[Zaerc]

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.

[gazlang]

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)??

[Zaerc]

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.

[gazlang]

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!

[Zaerc]

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.

[gazlang]

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'

[Zaerc]

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.

[atreidae]

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?

[Zaerc]

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:

echo "uinput" >> /etc/modules

[atreidae]

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
 

[Zaerc]

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. 

[gazlang]

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?

[cadman97]

Any new development on this? Just getting started.