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0 pointstomtheelder1y ago0 comments

You can what now?

0 comments

ladberg1y ago

The sensor bar isn't actually a sensor, just two IR blasters that the cameras on the wiimotes use for positioning.

You can use any two sources of infrared light instead!

mrguyorama1y ago

The sensor bar is ACTUALLY not two IR blasters, but two sets of 5 commodity IR LEDs!

https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-making-a-diy-wiibar

chabons1y ago

Before I knew this I had someone pull out their lighter and point the remote at it when our sensor bar died. Took me a little bit to figure it out.

eloisant1y ago

I blame Nintendo for calling their "2 lights bar" that doesn't have any sensor a "sensor bar".

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przemub1y ago

The sensor bar is passive - it's just two infrared diodes so the Wiimote can get an idea of its own position.

So you can replace it with candles as they emite infrared light as well!

mock-possum1y ago

I always thought it was hilariously similar to how to old NES zapper worked - the sensor was in the gun, it decided what you ‘hit’ based on what the sensor saw when the tv flashed. I think it was an early instance of me recognizing an engineering ‘hack’ - instead of the target reporting whether it had been hit, it was the gun reporting whether it thought it had hit the target.

mattnewton1y ago

the "sensor" is actually in the remote. The bar is just two infrared leds seperated by a known distance, that the infrared camera in the remote uses to figure out it's position.

0x1ch1y ago

I play a bit of flightsim and our head tracking works the same way. Camera receives IR LED position for head movement axis, program does the interpretation of movement.

extraduder_ire1y ago

There's a homebrew head tracking demo [0] for the wii that has you put a sensor bar on your head, and a wiimote on top of your TV. I messed around with it over a decade ago and found it very convincing.

0: https://www.wiibrew.org/wiki/Headtracking

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Klonoar1y ago

For fun, go look up Johnny Lee Wiimote candles. It showcases it fairly well.

Also man do I feel old - coming up on 15-20 years since that and I actually remember HN discussion about it from the earlier days.

Nursie1y ago

Yeah I was amazed when I first bought a wireless sensor bar, and there was nothing to plug into the console!

Turns out all the smarts are in the controllers, the bar is just there to show a couple of fixed points for positioning.

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