Hacking Wiimotes SURROUND!

[marcan]

Seeing as some people here can't tell "this is truly a horribly bad idea" from "marcan is just angry due to $INSERT_REASON_HERE", allow me to explain:

1. 3Khz sound, 4-bit ADPCM. That's much worse than a freaking cellphone call.
2. The Wiimote speaker is tiny. The sampling rate of the output is tiny. Tiny speakers can only play high-range. Small sampling rate means you can only use the low range. Conclusion: it's entirely and absolutely worthless for anything other than a crappy sliver of the mid-range. Good enough for noisemaking, useless for anything else.
3. The protocol is ridiculously wasteful
4. Hence, more than two wiimotes at once is going to be painful on the host
5. You get to encode the ADPCM on the fly too = waste of resources

There's not much you can do with tiny speakers and about 1200Hz of bandwidth. And if you replace the speakers the best you can do is a very crappy midrange speaker or a remote subwoofer. Remote subwoofers are useless because low frequency sound is non-positional.

 

[Tichinde925]

You ever open up a Wiimote before?

The speaker on the Wiimote is tiny and fragile.

Im pretty sure it can go louder than normal, but it would rupture as it is not supposed to be at that level. The sound will sound differently than normal when played at the highest setting for long periods of time.

 

[Matt93]

Seeing as some people here can't tell "this is truly a horribly bad idea" from "marcan is just angry due to $INSERT_REASON_HERE", allow me to explain:

1. 3Khz sound, 4-bit ADPCM. That's much worse than a freaking cellphone call.
2. The Wiimote speaker is tiny. The sampling rate of the output is tiny. Tiny speakers can only play high-range. Small sampling rate means you can only use the low range. Conclusion: it's entirely and absolutely worthless for anything other than a crappy sliver of the mid-range. Good enough for noisemaking, useless for anything else.
3. The protocol is ridiculously wasteful
4. Hence, more than two wiimotes at once is going to be painful on the host
5. You get to encode the ADPCM on the fly too = waste of resources

There's not much you can do with tiny speakers and about 1200Hz of bandwidth. And if you replace the speakers the best you can do is a very crappy midrange speaker or a remote subwoofer. Remote subwoofers are useless because low frequency sound is non-positional.

Which is why it wouldn't matter if you added a bigger speaker.

 

[Tichinde925]

Dont you mean 4 bigger speakers?

Also, if you make a mistake, thats $40 down the drain.

 

[Matt93]

A bigger speaker on each Wiimote, yes.

I never went to the trouble of looking up what marcan said, but I know enough with messing around with Wiimotes on my computer that a bigger speaker isn't going to help. You can't improve the signal.

 

[Tichinde925]

Only way to improve the signal would be to physically mod the component that sends out the signal.

In the end, its much better just to get surround sound. Its cheaper now than what it was a long time ago.

You can go with the cheap DVD surround home theatre and plug your Wii into it.

 

[IronMask]

Hey it was just something I was thinking over a nice joint... and well... I still think you can cut the cable off a nunchuck lying around and configure it to recieve more power with maybe 2 more AA batteries. Maybe the host could be boosted too.. I just don't think it would be anything real expensive except for the speakers.. they would have to be some descent little speakers and I have seen some. I will search for them some other time..

and this isn't meant to give you freakin' bowes super digital surround...it's a freaking device and software hack for pete's sake! Come on isn't this where we try and make ideas come to life with facing a little challenge and putting our heads together to have some fun times? I thought that was always the heart of homebrew if that is what you would like to value it as. I know that whatever I do in front of my pc is from my heart... I can create so much so easily if I just put my mind into it. What if we put 2, 3 ,4 or more together with that saome homebrew heart at mind and push the opinions to the side we could have unlimited bounds and leaps through this hobbie/project/devotion/life/addiction/fun/lonely lives of ours.

Anyways... just sharing some idea thought it could be explored... I mean shit, we are already popping controllers apart, splitting cables, adding leds, skins, modchips, etc. Why can't we build a cool little booster system in those wiimotes to lay beside our kids while nestled in bed or for the poor soul that can't afford surround. And by the way for the record! I have a 52" 1080p LCD display with 1600watt surround... my kid has a 32" SDTV in front of his little race car bed where lies and watches movies and plays his little softmodded wii and asks me when I will teach him homebrew...

You feel me now? I was just think it would be cool and the kid would love them.

 

[TheNewFlesh]

IronMask, it's cute that you're trying to play the "closed minded" card on other people, and it's cute that you feel the need to mention your weed use as if it matters or justifies anything, but this idea has been proven terrible already.

-Drains batteries
-Requires at least 4 remotes
-Requires at least 4 remote modifications
-Good luck hearing anything under 500Hz or above 6-7kHz

I could probably come up with 10 more reasons, but that's what's at very front of my brain. Without even thinking too hard it's easy to see why this would be a pain in the ass for everyone but you.

No child in the world is impressed enough with the gimmick of surround sound that they would deal with such a setup.
"Dad, the 'surround sound' system ran out of batteries again... well only the left speaker and the right-rear speaker. The others might last 10 more minutes.."

By the time you mod all your controllers, find some chump to make you homebrew for this setup, come up with "custom power supplies" or a "larger speaker" or "mod the host", you REALLY should have just spent $200 on an actual surround system.

I don't know anyone who can't afford surround, but thinks a decent alternative would be to hack apart expensive wiimotes, add some new speakers, add some bullshit controller extention power supply, mod the host wii, code some homebrew, and drain some AA batteries.

A surround sound system should sound DECENT at the very least. If it sounds terrible, "but technically it's still surround" then what's the point? To say that it happened? To impress your 7 yr old and feel like a big man?

 

[Brian117]

You guys do know that the speaker in the Wiimote is just a speaker with two metal points. Right? It's totally removable with no wires even attached to it.

So maybe a bigger speaker is possible.

But no flaming or taking sides,

It's a cool idea...but a bad idea. Can possibly ruin the Wiimote also.

Like others said...Would drain the batteries fairly fast, and could also mess up the communications.

 

[ether2802]

Well like Marcan said, it would be only to create noise, then how about to create a theremin synth, wich responds to the movements and position of the Wiimote?????

 

[djdynamite123]

That's got to be one of the most retarded ideas I've ever heard. For many reasons.

Guess that isn't on your Todo list Marcan hehe
Tell you what though the only game that has loud sound coming through my wiimote is TP Zelda, anyone else noticed that?
COD5 should be like Zelda TP (sound through wiimote) but it's not, how crap...

 

[Edgedancer]

No More Heroes had a good voice coming through the wiimote but that it was all crackly. Limitations of the speakers I guess.

 

[IronMask]

Whatever... it was just a thought... damn.. who says you needed to use 4 wiiremotes either?

I am just saying something for fun... so I mean for real... what's so ridiculous of it being an idea compared to some of the other homebrew releases I've seen...that I will not mention... because some of them are pretty pointless as well... yet someone made them, right?

I was just trying to make the point that anything is possible through homebrew... So a few of you want to get real technical about it.. .yet, if Nintendo came out with some attachments and a better media player,official dvd video support etc. for something like this...you know how many people would be all over it for their kids?! And batteries? I don't know about the rest of you, but I think it could be no worse than this WiiSpeak crap... I bought the WiiSpeak and thought it would work with the other usb mic games, etc. Animal city crossing... a game for my kid. Remember.. Wii's are more catered to kids.. and how many times has your kids came to you about changing the batteries in their favorite toy.. so what the hell is the difference?

Anyways... I guess it was stupid idea and for some thought it was something kinda cool.. to me... it doesn't matter one way or the other... I just noticed that when I was playing guitar hero is when I noticed more sound enhancements with the wiimote... I know they aren't the best... but the kids and some of big kids think shit like that is pretty cool... so whatever...it was not a replacement for dolby surround...just more fun.

 

[wolffangalchemist]

Whatever... it was just a thought... damn.. who says you needed to use 4 wiiremotes either?

I am just saying something for fun... so I mean for real... what's so ridiculous of it being an idea compared to some of the other homebrew releases I've seen...that I will not mention... because some of them are pretty pointless as well... yet someone made them, right?

I was just trying to make the point that anything is possible through homebrew... So a few of you want to get real technical about it.. .yet, if Nintendo came out with some attachments and a better media player,official dvd video support etc. for something like this...you know how many people would be all over it for their kids?! And batteries? I don't know about the rest of you, but I think it could be no worse than this WiiSpeak crap... I bought the WiiSpeak and thought it would work with the other usb mic games, etc. Animal city crossing... a game for my kid. Remember.. Wii's are more catered to kids.. and how many times has your kids came to you about changing the batteries in their favorite toy.. so what the hell is the difference?

Anyways... I guess it was stupid idea and for some thought it was something kinda cool.. to me... it doesn't matter one way or the other... I just noticed that when I was playing guitar hero is when I noticed more sound enhancements with the wiimote... I know they aren't the best... but the kids and some of big kids think shit like that is pretty cool... so whatever...it was not a replacement for dolby surround...just more fun.

not sure about a surround sound (if only the speakers where better)but using it as a kinda hand set with a Viop app (that i'm sure will get made sometime) that uses the wii speak mic would be awesome! also could make your calls a bit more private.

 

[marcan]

Well like Marcan said, it would be only to create noise, then how about to create a theremin synth, wich responds to the movements and position of the Wiimote?????

See, THAT sounds like a cool idea. And you don't need to fuck around with the hardware.

You can't really make the controlling variable position, but you can make it angle. Not quite a traditional theremin, but pretty close.

I think it's already been done using host speaker sound, so all you'd really need to do is pipe the audio to the wiimote.

 

[djdynamite123]

Well like Marcan said, it would be only to create noise, then how about to create a theremin synth, wich responds to the movements and position of the Wiimote?????

See, THAT sounds like a cool idea. And you don't need to fuck around with the hardware.
You can't really make the controlling variable position, but you can make it angle. Not quite a traditional theremin, but pretty close.

I think it's already been done using host speaker sound, so all you'd really need to do is pipe the audio to the wiimote.

ether2802 Nice idea, just earned some browny points

 

[Wiisel]

couldn't you just use two wiimotes and and a coat hanger and have like crappy headphones lol bunny ears
turn them sideways integrate head tracking and we could play find the sensor bar in the dark

Its good to see people thinking of new ideas but this would sound worse than an all in one home cinema kit not knocking the idea afterall its not why you do these things its all about because you can, just like my chunky savemiifrii emergency button idea its pointless but passes the time and maybe have some fun along the way

 

[WiiCrazy]

It could be done with special usb hardware I think... To take it simple think a gadget identifying itself as mass storage device to the system and when a special file in it written it just converts this to analog signal and gives this signal through it's output jacks... you can get as many channels as system is capable of... But you can only use homebrew with that...

The real implementation would be a complete new hardware, with specific drivers in ios... That only we can see in a new Nintendo game due to complexity... Nintendo won't bother with such an hardware in this current system...

So it's a no go...

Even c64 got extra sid through it's expansion port with it's 1mhz cpu clock... Just someone should take this as a commercial or a fun to do project... not so feasible..

 

[Chemical_Warfare]

Well like Marcan said, it would be only to create noise, then how about to create a theremin synth, wich responds to the movements and position of the Wiimote?????

See, THAT sounds like a cool idea. And you don't need to fuck around with the hardware.

You can't really make the controlling variable position, but you can make it angle. Not quite a traditional theremin, but pretty close.

I think it's already been done using host speaker sound, so all you'd really need to do is pipe the audio to the wiimote.

i actually like this idea - it would most likely be more fun than wii music, anyhow.

what if you say, used the nunchuck for angling the tone, and the mote itself like the hand movements? could the accelerometer be used to pick up the motions?

 

[screamq3]

that would be total crap due to sound quality fair enough if they had hi def wiimotes