WiiMoteLib - .NET library for Wii Remote

DotNetInterop — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 20:46:00 GMT

Just saw this, thought it was interesting in the realm of interop. The popular Nintendo Wii game system has some really cool motion-sensing magic in the controller. We have an xbox at home but my kids really want a Wii, partly for the cool remote which enables different game experiences, and partly for the expanded selection of games for younger people. I'm not a game weenie, but it seems to me xbox has a bunch of shooter games, plus all the NBA/NFL/NHL/Golf games you could want, while Wii has a bunch of games that are interesting and fall outside those limited bounds.

Anyway, there's a managed-code library for the Wii's remote, it is called WiimoteLib. (see the related article on Coding4Fun). It enables any managed app to interact with the Wiimote, read the sensors and button pushes. Chad Z. Hower, aka Kudzu, a Microsoft RD, put that library together with VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) and Excel 2007 to build a toolkit for the Wiimote, allowing you to graph the status of the motion sensors over time. (Did you know you could write managed code apps that run within Office programs like Excel? That's what VSTO is all about ). He calls it WiiWatcher. He said, "I decided to use Excel because of its built in analytics capabilities. Why build charting etc, when I can let Excel do it for me? In addition Excel allows you to save tests for later use."

Check out this blog post.

To me it is amazing to see all the different, novel connections people are forging with the .NET Framework.

All About Interop : Devices

WiiMoteLib - .NET library for Wii Remote