Special Input Devices: The Nintendo® Wiimote
To use the Polhemus Patriot with GripToos, you need the specialized Camera GripTools Wiimote version.
‘Wiimote’ is a nickname for the wireless Bluetooth remote controller as a part of the Nintendo® Wii™ game system. The Wiimote is not designed for use on personal computers and Nintendo® does not support this use or software. However, the Wiimote uses the wireless Bluetooth system to receive and transmit data. A lot of computers have nowadays standard Bluetooth support. It should therefore theoretically be possible for a pc to communicate with a Wiimote. That said, it appears that this is true, although not in all combinations of Wiimote/Bluetooth hardware/Bluetooth software/Windows version etc. At this moment it’s not clear what setup is stable. You should at least have a Bluetooth device or dongle installed and working. You do not need the Wii main unit, just the remote controller (Wiimote). If Bluetooth is installed on your computer, you will see the enabled blue icon in the system tray. In our tests, the Wiimote appeared as a Human Interface Device (HID) in the Bluetooth selection dialogs. We found that Windows XP with varying hardware worked. But we cannot guarantee this. As long as this situation continuous, we cannot officially support the Wiimote. There is not much you can do but experiment with the setup. There is a lot of information on the web about how to connect and use the Wiimote with a pc. However, if you have succeeded to connect a Wiimote to your system, we have experimental support available for download. Remember, this is really experimental and not officially supported.
Suggestions for connecting a Wiimote to a PC
1. Start up your Bluetooth software and let it search for the device.
2. Press and hold down the 1 and 2 buttons on the Wiimote. The blue LED lights should be flashing. Do not let go of these buttons until this procedure is completed.
3. The Wiimote should appear in the list of devices found as:
‘Nintendo RVL-CNT-01’.
4. Select this device and proceed with the connection wizard. If at any point you are asked to enter a PIN code in order to pair, leave it blank or skip this step. Do not enter a number.
5. If you are asked what service to use from the Wiimote, select keyboard/mouse/HID.
6. Finish the wizard and check if it’s connected. The Wiimote should now be active.
7. Make sure that only connected Wiimote controller(s) show up in the list of Bluetooth devices, otherwise the controller(s) will not work in Camera GripTools.
8. Start CINEMA 4D. This may take a little longer than usual, while starting the Wiimote led’s should turn off. If the Wiimote is active, you will be able to see interaction in the Wiimote Special Device Dialog. The axes will appear in the axes selection box just like the any other input device.
The Wiimote special devices dialog
The Wiimote controller uses internal acceleration sensors and an upfront camera to spot infrared light sources. If the connection has succeeded, the Wiimote has added 11 axes: Acceleration axes (3) Infrared camera Position coordinates. (4) If you have the Nintendo ‘Nunchuk’ plugged in, there will appear another 3 acceleration axes, plus two joystick axes, X and Y. To use the infrared light source positions, we have added 2 more useful axes: 1. ‘BarAngle’, the angle of the connecting line between 2 dots and the horizon. 2. ‘DistanceToBar’, the calculated distance to the LED bar. In the game, the LED bar should be located on the TV set. When the Wii is used as motion capturing device, these axes allow for great animation control. There are examples on the internet available that demonstrate this use. You can also use the infrared dot info from the frontal build-in camera to collect pan and positional data. The special settings dialog adds some useful settings.
The image left on the dialog shows the IR led positions detected by the Wiimote. With the Green button on top ‘Connect dots’ a virtual connection line is visualized.
The first 3 sliders enable you to scale the x, y and z acceleration data of the basic Wiimote.
With the fourth slider: ‘Led Bar’, you can calibrate the led bar width
(i.e. the distance between the two infrared light sources on the bar). If you use the Wiimote with handheld IR LED’s, this slider just scales the captured motion. The buttons enable you to switch on the blue led’s on the Wiimote and start/stop the rumble function. The Wiimote is powered by batteries. To test their condition, press the ‘Bat’ button.
