I actually tried this last night after seeing it on another sight and it worked! Now somebody can create a battery powered IR field to use for projectors. Weeeeee!

curiosity is the father of invention.

I don't get it ... So you can have any two remotes placed apart from each other, and they will automatically act as a sensor bar for the wii? So what exactly does the sensor bar do? I'd say this is all magic, anyhow :S

The sensor bar looks like it has 6 IR emitters, wouldn't be too hard to hack apart 6 TV remotes and wire the IR bits to a power source for a wireless sensor bar.

Though of course it's probably far easier to just figure out how to hook the sensor bar up to a power source so you don't need it tethered to the Wii.

Ok, this is a nice find. I had wanted to get a Wii, but I have my TVs configured so that the components that go with them (cable box, dvd, game systems, etc...) are hidden in a nearby closet. Unfortunatly, that made it so that the sensor bar wouldn't work for me as there was no way to run the wire from the TV to the Wii. Now, I have hope.

No wonder direct sunlight can be a problem with these things...

But yes, that is certainly is good news for the projector users. It doesn't even need to be wireless... just not attached to the wii.

Don't forget modding a cylon eye into the bar. Still waiting on that.

It also raises another interesting point, the video shows two IR emitters and the sensor bar has 6. Wonder if the precision of the pointer changes much depending on the number of emitters.

How weird! So the sensor bar only uses the Wii for Power! Then why didn't Nintendo just give it a simple USB plug? That would already make it a lot easier to find a power source for the thing. (Some TV's even have USB ports.)

That's great! Now I can buy two Wiis and use one to power the sensor bar while gaming with the other one. That way, I can use my beamer to play Wii games :-)

Seriously though, hopefully somebody will come out with a wireless sensor bar. Or maybe two Roomba virtual walls might work?

Can someone geekier than I explain precisely how this works? The remote senses the IR but what does it do with it? How does that help it? I'm a bit lost.

nintendo wants you to believe it is so super secret technology that only they develop.

Welp, that explains all those weird problems they were having with lighting in the room during demos.

The s3kr1t part is the sensor in the wiimote. I'm pretty sure they patented it, so you should be able to find it.

@wemayfreeze:
It uses two IR sources, as well as the amount of time it takes for the "blink" in the signal to get to the remote to triangulate the position and distance of the remote.

The blink part I'm guessing. If you go into the calibration for the sensor bar, it shows the two points for the bar. They blink like every .5 second. My guess is that the sensor in the wii-mote is precise enough to calculate the fraction of a second it takes to register the blink and uses that to calculate the distance from each of the points.

soooo... where do the wii development costs come from again?

The reason this works is that, as folks noted above, the sensor bar has absolutely no "sensors" in it -- it is simply a dual-IR source. Where is the sensor, then? The Wii-mote! Each controller has an infrared CCD that captures the two IR dots in its field of view. The image is then processed to determine where the remote is pointing at on its own little virtual screen (the center of the two dots), as well as its Z-axis orientation (the angle of the dots).

You can see this plainly when you go to the Wii's calibration screen: the two dots you see on the screen are a representation of what the Wiimote is "seeing" at that time. As you get closer to the Wii, the dots move farther apart.

Therefore, you should be able to create a more powerful sensor bar that will let you sit farther away by (a) increasing the intensity of the IR LEDs and (b) increasing the distance between them.

I am surprised, however, that the remotes worked anyway, because I'd imagine Nintendo is modulating the IR LEDs to a particular frequency to cut down on interference. I'd guess the remotes approximate the frequency enough to register. That, or I'm wrong, and Nintendo is just outputting full-on DC power to the LEDs.

Incidentally, this could make for some really intriguing controller add-ons: for example, a connection to a bodysuit with two infrared sources on it, letting people with two Wii-motes point at each other instead of the screen!

Oh wow. I guess I was under the assumption that the sensor bar kind of transmitted two-way. That's now been squashed.

Well, how does the Wiimote receive information from the Wii then? Magical unicorns with blue teeth?

............._________
.............__--------__
..............\........./
...............\......./
................\...../
.................\.../
..................\_/
..................| |
..................| |
...................--

Well, to undestand how the sensor bar works, imagine that you were blind to anything except little spots of light, so in order to not break your face in the walls, you would need a spot light in every corner of a room so you can triangulate your own position and avoid the wall between them, if you see one light in your right and one in your left, you know you are in the middle of a wall, if you see one in front of you and two at your sides, then you are in a corner.

That´s what the sensor bar does, it is blind to anything, except IR signals, so it knows if it´s two feet or ten away from the TV, if it´s more to the right or more to the left, all based on the IR signals that it can "see" with it´s own sensor.

The drawing sucks, I know...

For comparison, the good old NES Zapper used a totally different method of determining where you were aiming: it didn't. In fact, all it had was a simple sensor that knew if light was shining on it or not. What it actually did was to flash the screen white when you hit the trigger, and then rapidly flash a black silhouette of each target on the screen, in order. The Zapper, in turn, sent info back to the NES saying whether it saw white or black. If it reported seeing black when the proper silhouette was shown, the NES assumed you registered a hit; if not, it was a miss. This is why the screen flashed each time you hit the trigger -- it wasn't just a special effect, it was how the gun worked!

I think I got it. Thanks everyone!

So the timing is crucial then. It's possible that the timing is coordinated with the Wii, yah? So that a simple hacked wireless bar wouldn't actually work? Just thinkin' aloud.

Oops, my mistake: the Zapper blacked the screen out and drew white silhouettes, which is why you could fool the game into thinking you always hit by firing the Zapper at a bright light. Flashing the whole screen white immediately afterward was a way to disguise the brief blackout, instead of it looking like an annoying flicker.

so if you had the sensor bar there, and a couple of remotes in the wii remote's line of sight, will it mess up the calibration? So if I leave my TV remote near my Wii console it will mess it all up?

I supposed I could just try it instead of asking the Internets.

@wemayfreeze

I'm not sure the timing is crucial in this case. I don't know why you get those half-second blinks when you're in calibration mode, but from the disassembly I've seen, the controllers definitely have CCDs built into them, in which case they only need to "see" the two IR dots and that's it.

I had this long, technical explanation here about why triangulation using pulsing IR sources over such small distances isn't really viable (due to how incredibly fast light travels), but one thing really trumps the whole explanation: triangulation would let you find out where the remote is in relation to two sensors (three for a 3-D space), but it would do nothing for telling you where the remote is currently pointing.

That's why Nintendo's CCD approach is so elegant of a solution: it is easy to determine where the remote is pointing by observing what the remote sees and comparing that to a known image (in this case, the two IR dots). A decade ago, the image processing on the CCD's field of view that is required would have been far too slow to be useful, but these days it can be done in real time, at a high frame rate, on a CCD with a relatively high resolution (whatever that is, though I'm guessing at least 640x480).

@Frodo

I'd guess only if the remotes were constantly outputting an IR signal at a frequency similar to the Wii's sensor bar. As far as I know, most remotes only output IR when a button is pushed (or you'd drain the battery quickly).

An interesting test would be to press buttons on a remote while aiming it at the Wii-mote, and watch the calibration screen to see if another dot briefly appears.

If i remember correctly, someone reported this information before the Wii was released. I saw it on n-sider.com somewhere about the CCD, etc. But it shows that the wii-mote is way more complex than people think. Its deceptivly simplisitic. From what i understand it can also detect distance, speed, etc. I wonder if bluetooth 2.0 has those in its spec.

Dear god, that's fucking awesome.

So, where is this tech that put the price point very near X360 territory? Huh, Miyamoto-san?

What a bunch of tools, this information has been on wikipedia for a _VERY_ long time. They're not smart they're just lazy.

Search to learn!

Oooh, a new way to fuck with your friends playing Wii. How well does the Wiimote respond to 3 IR sources? Does it get confused? Somebody with a Wii, tell me. One of the first hacks I am going to do will be to add many more IR LEDs to increase intensity. If that is all the sensor bar is, it really wouldn't be hard to create a power source for it, you could calculate how much power is needed to run them and supply one yourself.

Am I the only one that had trouble focusing on anything that was actually being shown in the video because of how endearingly GEEKY that guy is? And that split second cameo of that other dude? I couldn't stop laughing. sigh.

Yeah, I figured out that it worked that way a few days ago. There are two Wiis in my house; One is mine, and one is my brother's. I was in my room alone when my little brother tried to sync with the console on the other side of the house. I had no knowledge of this, so imagine my surprise when a hand with a 2 on it went shooting across my screen. I about crapped myself. After running into the other room, I noticed my little brother pointed at the sensor confused. It was at that point that I realized what happened and how the tech worked.

You dont even need the remotes...
Say you go to your friends house...
you bring you wii and start setting it up....
OH SHIT!!!!
i forgot my sensor bar...
lol
not a problem
if you set up two candles and light them about as far apart as the normal wii senso is long it actually works!
i tryed it
i know
crazy huh?
lol