WiiFlash and Wiimotes on Dell Laptop August 14, 2007

I bought a few wiimotes a few weeks ago, after seen John Grden use them at his excellent Papervision talk, as he was using it to control his Papervision driven presentation (written in Papervision).

It was perfect timing needed some cool project to get the creative fires burning again I was worried that the wiimote and wiiserver might not work with the Dell 820 laptop bluetooth wireless, as I've never used the bluetooth on the laptop with anything, and previous experiences with bluetooth pairing has occasionally be painful. But it was *very* easy to setup, about 8 minutes from download to running the example.

Download the wiiserver package from http://www.wiiflash.org, this will give you the windows server (no mac yet, sorry). the as3 libraries and 3 demo Fla's, that show graphically the 3 different type of controllers supported, wiimote, nunchuck and classic controller.
If the remotes are new, make sure they have batteries (2 AA's), via popping off the back and turning the unit on via the small red button *within* the battery compartment.

Then on the task bar right click, then select 'Add New Connection'

Just click next, you should see a few options like this showing the various bluetooth devices it doesn't have connections to, in this case the "Nintendo PVL-CNT-01" is the droid your looking for.

and after you click next the bluetooth icon should turn green and you'll see the following connections manager

and starting up the wiiflash server you should see a connected icon like in the above, you need to make sure the bluetooth connection is working prior to starting the wiiserver. Meaning, powerup wiicontroller (flashy blinky blue lights), make sure connection is established in the , then powerup wiiserver. The remote should begin buzzing...which is quite alarming if it's on metal/glass table and your not expecting it... with it's blue led corresponding to it's appropriate id. Then fire up one of the examples included in the zip, or if your brave right click over the wiiserver running in the taskbar and select "Control Mouse", which in my test did work but very shakey, and only when it was pointed at the ceiling, likely as I don't have a 'sensor bar'.

If you leave the wiimote for a bit, it will turn off, and the wiiserver will apparently think there's still a connection despite there not being one. This can be confusing, as it will show the connection still there but it's actually just a memory. To get back you have to repeat adding the device, the above.