Hardware High power sensor bar

[kiteman]

Is there an after market 'wired' (not wireless) sensor bar that has a greater range than the original as my sofa is too far away from the bar and cannot pick up the remote.

 

[Scorpei]

Why not make one yourself?

 

[Hooya]

Maybe he doesn't have the skills, time, knowhow or desire to build one himself. Homebuilt ones usually don't look as nice as factory molded plastic too.

As far as I know there is no third party wired sensor bar, just the wireless ones. Can you set up the wireless bar closer to your seating position? Seems like you have an awfully large space between you and the sensor bar anyway... Must be a pretty kickass home entertainment system.

 

[kiteman]

How easy is to make a new one. Can I take apart the original one and put higher power LEDs in or wont that work.

As for the Entertainment system it's nothing special, but it does get the windows rattling at times

.

 

[Hooya]

Well, you can't really effectively put higher power LEDs into the current sensor bar to get better distance. What you'd need to do is build an LED array that has simply more LEDs on it. The Wii sensor bar has I think a total of 6 or 8 LEDs (two sets of 3 or 4, I can't remember which). So you could build one with two blocks of 9 LEDs, or simply two independent LED arrays each with a 9 block setup and position them wherever you want. Try to keep the distance and positioning proportional.

Some handy links to building your own:
http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz
http://www.dansdata.com/caselight.htm

The first link tells you some technical specs of things to make sure you're building a compatible array. The second link is a tutorial that can tell you how to build an array from scratch. Just use InfraRed LEDs (IR-LED) instead of colored ones and you'll be all set. IR LEDs are more expensive, but it's what you have to use for a sensor bar.

Hopefully you can figure out the rest on your own. You can provide power from whatever source you want such as a battery, a wall outlet (provided you know how to control the voltage) or a USB port (the USB ports in the back of the Wii should provide at least 5.5v, so you could use those since USB connectors are easy to come by).

 

[WarmWoollySheep]

There was a fold-out travel sensor bar just released, that is quite a bit wider than the original bar.

I'm not sure if wider is better for range, but I'd assume so.

 

[coolbho3000]

Remember that LEDs, in that the high power ones have focused beams of light. Meaning they won't work really well for short distance at all.

Try using perhaps two LEDs for each sensor bar point, one high power LED, one normal LED. This way the sensor bar works both short distance and long distance.