Wii Motion Plus Direct PC Interface

You can pick up a Wii Motion Plus module for under $20 and that’s not bad for an I2C gyroscope. This hack taps into the device through a PC parallel port. The connection calls for some level conversion to step down to the 3.3v needed by the module. The communication protocol borrows from the Wii on Arduino code examples that we saw last year. You can see the Wii Motion Plus controlling a virtual cube in the video after the break.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aj-JIishVo]

[Thanks Phsr]

7 thoughts on “Wii Motion Plus Direct PC Interface

  1. what does he mean “really cheap and nasty i2c bus”

    i’ve been wanting to do a project involving gyros for a long time, and i thought these would be perfect to modify, but is there a drawback to i2c?

  2. @monster
    He means the interface he threw together is cheap and nasty.

    About the video: is it me or does the cube seem to move before he does a few times?
    I’m not saying it’s all fake but perhaps edited for clear presentation?
    Or maybe I’m just mad, but like at 1:23 for instance it seems so to me.

  3. @Whatnot
    There’s no editing in the video. It’s one continuous shot, a single take. What you see is what you get.

    The gyro is quite sensitive, and while my hand is fairly steady, it wasn’t the most comfortable position to hold still in.

    Also, as I mentioned in the blog post, there is a small amount of drift.

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