Wii Sensor Bar Projector

Having experienced quite a bit of trouble getting the Nintendo Wii remotes to work reliably with his home theater projector, [Sprite_TM] designed his own sensor bar replacement. If you’re not familiar, the Wii remotes have an infrared camera in the tip that sense two IR LEDs in the sensor bar that resides above or below your television. The problem is that if you’re too far away, the points of light are not where the remote expects them to be and the cursor will not perform as expected. Since this is a huge projected display it’s no surprise that the player is further away from the screen than the system was designed for.

[Sprite_TM’s] solution was to build a projection system for the two IR points. The unit in the picture above is a driver circuit with two IR emitters mounted on a heat sink, each with its own reflector. The reflected beams are shined through a Fresnel lens and projected on the same wall as the TV image. The viewer will not be able to see this light as it’s in a longer wavelength than the visible spectrum. But the Wii remote performs beautifully now and the replacement sensor bar is happily mounted out of sight above the projector.

19 thoughts on “Wii Sensor Bar Projector

  1. Cool idea to project the dots… I would just be interested in how well they are focused… I guess you could use the Wii config screen’s view of the wiimote sensor to focus/position the beams.

    Re: alternate IR sources, I have a CFL in my range hood, with the bulb having direct line-of-sight to my rear projection TV… when the bulb is on, the faint reflection on my screen confuses my wiimotes! Pretty annoying.

  2. The only reason for multiple LEDS in Wii bars is to compensate for how directional they are.
    A way to overcome this if you make your own with just two is to rough the surface of the LED up with emery paper to diffuse the light coming out of it so it can be seen from any angle (it can reduce the range though)

    This idea of projecting the dots also overcomes the directionality problem

    Very clever

  3. How well do the normal IR remotes work when the room is flooded with IR for the wii, are they modulating the signal any ? I know you can jam another remote by generating an IR signal in the room at 38-40Khz from a single IR diode.

  4. Why not use infrared lasers? Powered by the wii’s sensor output cable and directed on the wall/screen. There would be no need to lenses and focusing and all that etc etc.

    I have been pondering this for some years now but have never got a difinitive answer on what wavelength diode to purchase… And dont know if I can simply power the diodes from the sensor bar cable… And I am also lazy…

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