Remote control your PC using a Wii remote

I’ve been tripping on the Wii lately, and another application that I cooked up over the last couple of days was something I like to call “WiiCONTROL”. Its an application that allows me to control navigation on Windows 7 using the Nintendo Wii remote.

I have built my app on top of Brian Peek’s Wiimote library. I hope you’re reading this Brian :D

The need for the application arose while I was watching a movie a night ago, and I realized that using a wireless keyboard while lying in the comfort of my bed was rather annoying. I needed something that didn’t take much space and was “like a remote”. Lying next to my computer was the Wiimote I’ve been using off late.

The application took me nearly a day to make. The major portion of the app was figuring out how the navigation on windows could work solely through keyboard events and then tying them up to the button press events generated by the Wiimote.

Here’s what it looks like:

You can clearly see which functions are tied up to which buttons and the battery indicator gives you a rough idea about how much juice you have left in your remote. The experience counter may be used to control how responsive (key de-bouncing is such a pain!) your remote should be. The preset value works really well for me. The box titled “function” can be used to check which key corresponds to which function. You push a button and it shows up on that box.

Here’s my personal favorite. When you click “test feedback”, the app sends a signal back to your remote causing it to vibrate momentarily :D confirming a closed loop between your PC and your remote.

The app iconizes to your system tray and can be brought back to focus by double clicking the “YODA” icon (heehee!!!) therein.

Whats cooler, is that if you use VLC player, you can use the same remote to Play/Pause/FF/Rewind/Control Volume.

Here’s a video I made last night of me using the app on my home computer. Its a bit fuzzy thanks to the compression, but you can see what the deal is all about.

Go to my projects page to download the app. Please note that you have to hook up your Wiimote to your PC before starting the app. If the Wii is not found, it will simply notify you and exit. For a tutorial on how to connect your Wiimote to your Windows PC, go here.