Slashdot Mirror
How the Wiimote Works
The New York Times' 'How it Works' series touches on a remote with a twist: the Nintendo Wiimote. The article describes the micron-sized machines that make it work, displays cut-away graphics of the little white marvel, and rounds out the discussion with a breakdown of where the tech came from. From the article: "The controller's most-talked-about feature is the capacity to track its own relative motion. This enables players to do things like steer a car by twisting the remote in the air or moving a game character by tilting the remote down or up. 'This represents a fabulous example of the consumerization of MEMS,' the tiny devices known as micro-electro-mechanical systems, said Benedetto Vigna, general manager of the MEMS unit at STMicroelectronics, a leading maker of the accelerometers embedded in the controllers. (Nintendo itself declined to talk about the controllers' inner workings.) He said the motion sensors, using the technology that activates vehicle air bags, can accurately sense three axes of acceleration: up and down, left to right, and forward and backward."
C'mon, "editors"...this is SlashDot, not Time. Most people here could probably have written that article blindfolded. How about a couple of real tech articles today?
This just in.
Nintendo is using their wiimote technology to determine when the wiimote flies from the users hand, and will now deploy an airbag before striking your HDTV.
Please return your wiimote for the new version with the wiirbag.
The sixaxis must be twice as good! Either that or Sony failed geometry...
I thought the Wiimote worked like this:
If you see a monster, throw the Wiimote directly at the monster. Depending on your aim, the monster will die in a shower of bright sparks and crackly noises, or the monster will hurl various objects back at you such as books, chunks of plaster, ceiling fan blades, or your little brother's eyeball.
[
independent researchers have shown that there is a strong link between very high voltages coming from the accelerometers and the state of inebriation (and perhaps low IQ) of the player...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
After having used my Wii and the controller for a couple weeks now I've been somewhat disappointed with the technology.
First, the Wiimote isn't an absolute pointing device. It's all relative to the Wiimote bar you place near your TV. Everything is relative to that device, so you are never actually pointing accurately at anything on your screen.
Second, the Wiimote has accuracy/responsiveness issues. Not sure if it is interference from bright lights or some other type of wireless/electronic devices. There are times where you are having to repeat the same motions over again because the Wiimote isn't registering.
Nothing fatal, but the hype certainly has worn off. Hopefully Nintendo will be coming out with updates to make the Wiimote more consistent in registering input over the next year.
I'm a bit confused. The ability of the Wiimote to sense the angle it's at seems quite consistent, and doesn't appear to be possible to "fool", while the ability to sense motion can be fooled somewhat.
It seems to me that they must be separate, at least a little. You can walk away with a Wiimote, far out of bluetooth range, turn it however you like, bring it back... And the console will still sense its orientation precisely. Location? Games that use that sometimes get out of sync so you have to wave the Wiimote around a bit to get them better calibrated.
So I'm pretty sure that's a separate feature, to say nothing of the additional component of the CCD pointing at the IR sources above your TV to give you a pointing device.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
While I love the Wiimote and Nunchuk, I think they really suffer from the lack of at least a single-axis gyroscope. The accelerometer is great for measuring tilts in relation to the earth's surface, but they can't register angles on axes perpendicular to the earth's surface. This makes it more difficult to register a camera pan to the left or right, for instance, without involving the IR sensor.
The most obvious use (to me) for such a feature would be to have the Nunchuk pan the camera left and right as you point it left and right (in FPS games for instance), but it would also improve situations like batting and swordfighting where you want the instrument onscreen to match the angle of the Wiimote as closely as possible.
Why would you want to have to calibrate it for the TV? The way it is set up right now, it is all relative. It doesn't have to aim exactly where you are pointing, it just has to change its position based on your movements in a consistent manner. The way it is now, i can go from a 23 inch TV to a 9 foot wide projector image with absolutely no calibration. Plug it in and go. That's really special.
I'd M2 that unfair.
Time is very dumbed down, and uses slang my middle school English teacher wouldn't allow. That's for non-technical articles.
The NY Times article doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
I assume the firmware is trying to keep it simple so people won't get confused by basic settings. A game that needs correct aim could always add those calibration options (of course it'd be better if the firmware could store that config so you don't have to redo it for every game, maybe once the lightgun games come out Nintendo will consider adding it to the firmware).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.