Controlling movement with a Wii Balance Board

Great news aabel, can't wait to try it myself! I'm convinced this is going to be a great improvement over using the keyboard or thumbsticks for avatar movement (especially in combination with the hydra).

Are you planning to share the source code? or at least an exe + setup guide so others can test it? :-)

"aabel" wrote:
The Nintendo brand board is indeed sensitive enough to be sat on and controlled that way.

If you are getting crazy readings from WiiYourself in the demo app it might be a low battery problem. The Wiiboard tends to go ape shit when the batteries are low and WiiYourself's battery level reporting is not accurate in our experience.

Just one more thing that makes me wish we had a native PC balance board.

That's probably true, but given that the raw data output (according to http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Wii_Balance_Board) is raw binary data whose datatype has to be interpreted by whatever code is reading it, whether this is interpreted as a signed or unsigned value is entirely down to the code.
And while negative values for an accelerometer or gyroscope make some kind of sense, for weight sensor a negative value would be nonsensical, which makes me think that the fact that it's even possible for the Wii Yourself libraries to report negative weights is still going to be a driver issue, and not a hardware one.
(After all, if you take the raw value and interpret it as an unsigned value, you might have a huge amount of error compared to what the actual reported weight should be, but you will under no circumstances have a negative weight reported unless you're treating the data as being signed to begin with.)

It will be awhile before we release any demos or code for public consumption, we have high standards for ourselves and player control programming can be real challenging, especially when entirely new control schemes are being developed using inputs in combinations that they were never intended for :twisted: We also don't want to be in the position of releasing code we have no intention of supporting, because no matter how clearly you say you aren't supporting something you will get angry emails demanding support.

When the guys doing WiiBuddy for Windows get the bluetooth issues figured out I would encourage you to start some development in Unity with it as that will be a much more friendly, robust and supported library to start from than WiiYourself.

If you haven't checked out WiiBuddy yet I highly suggest watching this 5 minute video, when this is working in Windows we will be all over it. http://vimeo.com/53230125#

just a heads up for anyone looking to do experiments with the balance board they seem to be low on stock and the price is going up. But I expect Nintendo will do a reprint once the WiiU Fit game come out.

Very cool that this is showing promise in a VR environment, aabel. Looking forwards to hearing your thoughts on this as your work progresses. :)

Thanx for the info aabel, very interested in this so i might give it a try myself if i can find the time to do it!

"usb420" wrote:
just a heads up for anyone looking to do experiments with the balance board they seem to be low on stock and the price is going up. But I expect Nintendo will do a reprint once the WiiU Fit game come out.

I'm guessing this might vary by region, and of course, be mainly true for new hardware. (Incidentally, there are patents around for a Wii Balance board with extra sensors compared to the original - ~ I can't remember of the top of my head what they measured, but if there is a Wii fit U, I'd expect this upgraded board design to show up alongside it.)

I think you're best bet for finding a balance board right now is second hand stores though;

I got mine from one, and that store literally had about 30-40 of them...
Lots of people in the area had clearly been dumping them recently. They were on sale for next to nothing too. Especially considering their original retail price...

Today I added in turning to my own test program and tidied it up for release.
Runs by itself, sending WASD key presses and mouse movements to any game or application.

Please take a second to look at the included README.TXT as it explains some of the options.
Zip has both a ready to go .EXE ( + 2 DLL ) and C# source code for Visual Studio.

EDIT: Updated version available here http://www.greycube.com/site/download.php?view.68

... Is that a screen capture of a real sensor reading? Because the values seem rather improbable. XD

Other than that, it looks like a pretty useful little program... XD

Real values in KG where I am sitting and putting full pressure at the top of the board with my feet.
( The ratio's in the top right are X, Y, Diagonal Left, Diagonal Right, Diagnonal Difference. )

My EA Wii board's top sensors are not very good, that's why I have the offset correction option, and I will be looking to get an official Wii replacement.