nintendo wii hacks
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUzgYcokIF4]
When [Epokh] sent in this Wii controlled segway style bot, we remembered a post a few months ago where someone made a balancing bot, but hadn’t completed the Wii code. Well, [Epokh] is going to show you how to implement the Wii controls with the Lego NXT system. He’s found the links to all the software you need and broken down the configuration step by step. He’s been busy lately, let’s hope he keeps it up.
[Ozan] sent in this build log from when he made a Wiitar. As you can probably guess from the title, it’s a guitar combined with a wiimote. He has completely gutted the Wiimote and installed the internals in the guitar. Some toggle switches were mounted to control the button states on the Wiimote. This is a pretty useful setup as you can use the Wiimote data to control effects on the guitar. We’ve actually seen a very similar setup before. [Ozan] has included the build log, as well as a simple glovepie script and a sample effect patch.
Have you ever wondered how high or how fast a model rocket goes when you launch it? [sprite_tm] did, so he decided to build a low cost, lightweight data logger that he could fit into the nose cone of his rocket. To keep the circuit small, he built it around the popular ATtiny13 microcontroller. The microcontroller collects data from a Freescale MMA7260, a 3-axis accelerometer that he extracted from a third-party Wii nunchuck controller. After the microcontroller collects the data, it’s stored in 32K of EEPROM on a 24C256. All of this is powered by a small 3.6v Li-ion battery, which is the largest part of the circuit. If this sounds like something you’d like to make, he has detailed instructions along with the software used available on his site. While we don’t launch a lot of model rockets here, we may soon start just so that we have an excuse to build this.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBj7koZ9lk]
The Phoenix is a very impressive hexapod robot platform. It has 18 servos which gives each leg 3 degrees of freedom and a BasicAtom Pro 28 for the brains. Interestingly, the design started as a personal project of a forum member on the Lynxmotion forums. It turned out so well, it has become an actual product. We’ve seen videos of these before and they always have some pretty fluid and organic seeming motion. They seem almost alive in this configuration. The only thing that might make them scarier would be to add Lou Vega’s decapitated head, well maybe that plus some really nice face tracking. In the video above, you can see where someone paired one up with a Wiimote for a pretty intuitive control scheme. Yeah, we realize the video is nearly a year old, how did we miss this one? You can see a video of it walking around after the break, and another controlled by a ps2 controller.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phcsDNOglLI]
[Yezzer] has posted a video of a cool little project he’s working on. He has interfaced the Arduino and the Wii Nunchuck to control some servos. He mounted a standard USB webcam on it for good measure. There isn’t a whole lot of information, but he does include a few links to code he modified for the project. The movement is quite natural looking and seems like it would be a cheap way to get some good animatronic controls started. This might actually be a great way to control a robot for the Crabfu challenge, if they ever have another one.
Update: As [dokument] points out in the comments below, it looks like we’ve seen a set up that could be almost identical in the past.
[via the Hack a Day Flickr pool]
We’ve posted a plethora of Guitar Hero style hardware hacks, but this one is completely different than the others. Behold, the Banjo hero. This unique controller was constructed from an old banjo and a guitar hero controller. Custom software was then built with custom songs for game play. We really wish we could see it in action. There are a couple videos available for download, but they are just pictures of the build process.
[via Boing Boing]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLWAWtpcelM]
[kero905] sent in this project he’s working on. It is an open source hardware converter to connect Wii controllers via USB. It uses an Arduino for its brains. It is still in development, the only controllers that work are the nunchuck and the classic. He notes that there are enough extra pins left to adapt to an arcade controller fairly easily. The code is available on the site, as well as a rough parts list.
