Technabob » wiimote

Kinect-Controlled Cat Brushing Robot: One Small Step for Robot, One Giant Motion-Controlled Leap for Mankind

Lambert Varias — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:00:24 +0000

The inverse proportion of awesome Kinect hacks to decent Kinect games continues. Software engineer Taylor Veltrop used a combination of store-bought items and his non-store-bought brain to come up with a robot that mimics his movements sends video back to him in real-time. The robot’s first mission? Brush Veltrop’s cat.

Using a Kinect, a Wiimote, a treadmill and a custom made head-mounted display (HMD), Veltrop was able to control a NAO robot remotely and almost entirely through his movement alone. A couple of cameras mounted on the robot allowed Veltrop to see what the robot was seeing, which in this case was his unimpressed cat.

Wow. That took a while. Then again, that was the work of one man operating on a meager budget. Can you imagine if more work was done towards perfecting this? Businessmen of the future could hold meetings remotely and brush each other while talking about fiscal years and mergers and burgers and stuff! Seriously though, this is some Daimos-level technology. From here we can have easy to operate robots that will sub for us when it comes to dangerous activities such as bomb disposal, search and rescue, cleaning the toilet… the possibilities are endless. And it started with a video game device with no decent games.

[via Popular Science]

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Gold Wiimote Coming November 20th

Conner Flynn — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 21:41:48 +0000

Ready yourself to save Hyrule yet again with the release of Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. But it isn’t a sword that you will be raising skyward, instead you will have a shiny new gold Wiimote.

A golden Wii Remote Plus actually. And now we have a release date and pricing. After all you have to buy it first, before you can save Princess Zelda for the umpteenth time. I thought sisters were doing it for themselves these days. Not her apparently.

It will arrive at retailers on November 20th. That’s when you’ll be able to get your hands on the golden Wii remote bundle for $69.99 (USD). Or you can choose the game by itself for $49.99 (USD). No matter which you choose, you will also get The Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony Concert music CD.

Better start saving up.

[via Engadget]

Guitar Hero Drums Hacked to Play Real Music

Technabob — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 02:09:33 +0000

While word on the street is that future versions of Rock Band might actually teach you how to play real instruments, modder Andy Lunn couldn’t wait that long and figured out a way to make real music with his Guitar Hero drum kit.

These fancy Guitar Hero World Tour drums are velocity sensitive and have a pair of cymbal pads, which made the kit the perfect controller for realistic drumming. With the help of OSCulator, Andy managed to map the pads to work as a MIDI controller for GarageBand on his Mac. The results of his efforts can be seen in the video below:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The cool thing about this hack is that all you need is the GHWT Wii wireless drum kit, a Wiimote, a copy of OSCulator, and a Mac with GarageBand installed to do this yourself. You can check out Andy’s complete tutorial over at Vultrix.

If you’ve got a Windows PC, you might be able to pull off something similar using this Wiimote-to-MIDI hack and a copy of an audio sequencer of your choosing.

[via lifehacker]

Wii Dart Controller – Don’T Throw Your Wiimote at the Tv!

Technabob — Sun, 17 May 2009 12:00:02 +0000

This new add-on kit from PEGA turns your stock Wiimote controller into a giant dart.

Designed specifically for games like PDC World Championship Darts, this kit adds a soft arrow tip and feather-shaped tail to your Wii controller. At that size, it looks much more like a lawn dart than something you’d throw for a game of 301 or 501 at your local pub. Ahh, remember lawn darts…

Frankly, I don’t need yet another reason to accidentally throw my Wiimote through through my flat-screen – again. But if you absolutely must have one of these, you can find them over at DealExtreme for $9.54 (USD).