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Wiimote hack measures vehicle acceleration

11:18 AM on 07.30.2007, Dale North 13 comments

Wiimote hack measures vehicle acceleration photo
     AMAZING

There is a lot of technology in the Wii Remotes that we regularly wiggle around. While we were busy aiming for headshots and curveballs, one clever auto enthusiast figured out a way to use the Wii Remote to calculate G-forces and acceleration times. I've never felt so stupid!

VW Vortex is a web site for Volkswagon enthusiasts, and member klee did the fancy math and hacks to use the Wii Remote's accelerometers to measure his car's performance. He combined the Bluetooth accessibility used in other Wii hacks with some software, drivers, and clever scripting to create the system that could gauge his car's 0-60mph times. All of this data was processed in Microsoft Excel, and now you can see graphs and charts of his Jetta's performance.

In his post, klee admits that the results are not super-accurate, as the Wiimote gives G readings rounded to two decimal places, but it's pretty amazing that a gaming controller could be used for this kind of purpose.

If you're one of those big-brained people, hit the jump to see technobabble.

 

I got this idea after seeing some physics class use the wiimote in some kinda pendulum experiment.

Why not use the wiimote's built in 3-axis accelerometers to measue g-forces, acceleration and even calculate my own 0-60mph times!

So I did. I wrote a script to dump all the g-force readings from the wiimote to a comma separated value file, then did some post processing in MS Excel, and voila, I can see every bump, every curve, my acceleration and braking, and even calculated my current speed using high school physics (v=a*t)

I even convinced my coworker to take me out in his E46 M3 to measure his SMG's performance

I admit, it's not super accurate since the wiimote spits out G readings rounded to two decimal places. It also provides other acceleration readings in finer granularity, but I couldn't figure out what metric it was recording in. I used Gs since I knew it was just the acceleration of gravity (9.8 m/s/s).

Here's a copy of the script that dumps everything out to output.txt
All you need is Glovepie v0.29, a Bluetooth dongle with BlueSoleil, the Human Interface Device drivers, and a standalone wii remote!
All the basic instructions on how to get your wii remote connected to your PC can be found here:
http://www.wiili.org/GlovePIE


If anybody wants my excel spreadsheet with the formulas and graphs, you can find it here:
http://people.ucsc.edu/~klee/t...s.xls

//Glovepie v0.29 script

var.t=time*86400

//Writes motion data to file
OutputToFile(RemoveUnits(var.t)+","+Wiimote.gx + ", " + Wiimote.gy + ", " + Wiimote.gz)

debug = var.t+', '+wiimote.gx+', '+wiimote.gy+', '+wiimote.gz

 


Next page: More wii stories




Edarios's Avatar
Edarios at 07/30/2007 11:37
goombas?
Snaileb 's Avatar
Snaileb at 07/30/2007 11:58
*scratches head*
Professor Pew's Avatar
Professor Pew at 07/30/2007 12:24
And now to wait for the first Wiimote fap-charts...
SniperFodder's Avatar
SniperFodder at 07/30/2007 12:29
I think my IQ just dropped even further. It's at like six now.
Mxyzptlk's Avatar
Mxyzptlk at 07/30/2007 18:03
Finally, a practical application for the Wiimote!
Reeper's Avatar
Reeper at 07/30/2007 20:40
That's easy, I use the Wiimote to calculate the centripetal velocity of the disk reader on the Wii using the IR readeraoiwetna;oubya;orynae;orynaeo;rinhaeoiyjhware9uae0


Sorry, my brain just got the BSOD. Had to reboot.
tehdopefish's Avatar
tehdopefish at 07/30/2007 21:41
whats not to get? it's simple physics.

its like tying a weight on a string to a protractor to measure accelleration... didn't you do that in high school?
Acefowl's Avatar
Acefowl at 07/31/2007 00:41
Wow, that is awesome. Props to that guy, seriously.

Now all we gotta do is make the tech available to regular Wii owners so they know exactly how fast the remote was going before it smashed their screen. :)
wardrox's Avatar
wardrox at 07/31/2007 03:23
@tehdopefish, exactly. I think it's just that it's not written for non techies which causes issue.
hjd uk's Avatar
hjd uk at 07/31/2007 04:32
Sweet!. Nice litte wiimote project, now if he can get the pointer-sensor to detect sped cameras .....
Im not sure how well a PC would have taken a nice bumpy ride in a car. And how the hell did he calibrate the accellerometers ( do they have factory set standards on the chips ? ).
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