Tuesday, July 15, 2008

My new toy

My girlfriend got me an early gift for my birthday.



Yeah. No. Not a Wii, just the Wiimote.

I've been pining for one for the past few months, comparing everything to the price of a Wiimote, and she finally caved in and decided to get me one.

She probably didn't see the point in getting a Wiimote without the console, but I've been watching those videos and drooling with envy at the all geeky things you can do with a Wiimote and a PC with a Bluetooth adapter.

Installing the damn thing

My Bluetooth adapter is the cheapo Billionton BT-dongle that seems to do the job well enough.

It comes with IVT BlueSoleil drivers. My first try with this set of drivers kept me awake for most of the morning. The Wiimote was being detected, but GlovePIE and Wiinmote refused to detect it.

I got a copy of the BlueSoleil drivers v1.6.2.1, and these worked fine, but since my dongle was detected as an unlicensed device, I was only limited to 5MB data transfer before needing to restart BlueTooth.

GlovePIE and Wiinmote worked perfectly here, and before long I was playing TrackMania Sunrise with the Wiimote as a steering wheel,
and Portal with some difficulty.

Before long I exceeded the 5MB limit and my game of Portal was abruptly halted due to lack of control. This wouldn't do.

I finally tried going back to a newly downloaded copy of v1.6.1.4, and now BlueSoleil is not complaining about about an unlicensed device, while GlovePIE continue to work happily.

To get everything working you will need:


  • A BlueTooth dongle (BillionTon was used here)

  • Bluetooth drivers (BlueSoleil v1.6.1.4 was used here)

  • GlovePIE v???

  • PPPJoy

  • Some patience



I'll not post complete instuctions on how to set things up here. Google can help you find that.