electronic music news

The Wii Remote — or “Wiimote” to its millions of fans — has radically altered the video-game world by offering players an unprecedented level of physical participation. Nintendo has packed into a $40, palm-size package control features that a half-dozen years ago would have cost 50 to 100 times as much (see Fig. 1). Instead of pushing buttons and moving joysticks, virtual golfers and bowlers now swing their arms and pump their legs, and virtual battlefield commanders literally point and shoot at their targets. If you're an electronic musician with a hankering for something new, the fun really starts when you add a Wiimote.

The Wiimote is a squared-off white cylinder about the size of a clave or a large hot dog, with 11 buttons and a dark area at one end that has something to do with infrared light. Inside are an Analog Devices ADXL 330 3-axis 3G accelerometer; a highly accurate, 2-axis infrared tracking system; a cell-phone-style vibrator called a “rumble generator”; a tiny speaker; and a Bluetooth transmitter and receiver. For another $20, you can almost double the Wiimote's power by adding a Nunchuk, a pickle-shaped device that plugs into the Wiimote with a cable and gives you a second ADXL 330, a two-dimensional joystick, and a couple of more buttons.

The ADXL 330 (which, if purchased separately, would cost nearly twice as much as the Wiimote) is a remarkable little chip. It senses motion in the x (left to right), y (up and down), and z (forward and back) planes and generates three different analog voltages in response. But its 3G (3 Gravities) rating means that it is sensitive enough to respond to the earth's gravitational field, even when it's not moving. So it not only measures acceleration, it can also measure static position relative to the earth's pull — in other words, tilt. At all times, therefore, the unit reports its rotational position in three dimensions: what airplane pilots call pitch (vertical plane), yaw (horizontal plane), and roll (twist).

The infrared system is just as remarkable. It uses a Pixart Multiple Object Tracking CMOS optical sensor, a technology that is also used in cameras. If you're one of the millions who have bought one of Nintendo's Sensor Bars for the Wiimote, you may be surprised to learn that all of the infrared tracking is done within the Wiimote. “Sensor Bar” is a complete misnomer: all that's in it are a handful of infrared LEDs, which the Wiimote's sensors track as you move the Sensor Bar. (This is why the Sensor Bar costs only $10.) The Sensor Bar has to connect to a Wii console not to pass data, but to draw power from the console. If you don't have a Wii, then you can opt for a “wireless Sensor Bar,” which is nothing more than a set of battery-powered infrared LEDs, available from several companies.

If you've inferred from the last paragraph that you don't need a Wii console to get information from the Wiimote, you're right. The Wiimote communicates with the console, and anything else in range, using Bluetooth technology. Therefore any computer or other device with Bluetooth capability can be taught to respond to Wiimote-generated data.

Of course, getting the Wiimote to connect to your Mac or PC is one thing, but figuring out what it's sending is a lot more complex. Fortunately, there are a number of free or very inexpensive programs for both platforms that will read Wiimote movements, tracking data, and button pushes and translate them into useful information. The Wiimote-hacking community is huge and truly international, with contributions from almost every corner of the globe.

Some Wiimote-reading utilities use the data to simulate what one normally does in front of a keyboard: move the mouse, pull down menus, and press keys. For example, WiinRemote, from Japan, is a free utility for Windows that lets you move the computer cursor using either the accelerometer, the IR sensors, or the Nunchuk's joystick and lets you assign different keys and combinations to the various buttons. Similar applications for the Macintosh are DarwiinRemote (free, from Japan) and Remote Buddy (19.99 euros, or approximately $27 at this writing), which is made by a German company called IOSpirit. These utilities can be used in conjunction with almost any program: for instance, with Ableton Live you can use the Wiimote's buttons, joystick, and the rest to enable loops, mix tracks, change tempos, play with synth parameters, or trigger notes or samples on a virtual keyboard. Many of these utilities can also work with other Bluetooth-enabled devices, such as EyeTV remotes, cell phones, and the instruments in the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games.