Xwiimote Mouse Driver

A mouse driver for WiiMote remote controls based on the xwiimote kernel driver for Linux.

What is this project meant for?

This project is meant for people who want to control a Linux-based multimedia station like Kodi or Steam Big Picture mode using a WiiMote.

Features

  • Use the WiiMote as a pointing device on any Linux GUI

  • The driver contains a configuration utility for: - Calibrating the WiiMote sensor to match your screen setup - Allow to map keys to arbitrary mouse/keyboard/gamepad buttons

What do you need to run the Xwiimote Mouse Driver?

_images/wiimote.jpg

  1. A WiiMote; the thing shown in the image above.

  2. A Linux computer with a compatible bluetooth device and the hid-wiimote kernel driver running. I have no clue which bluetooth devices are compatbile and which are not, but I have seen mainly older bluetooth dongles not being able to detect the WiiMote.

  3. A standalone Wii sensor bar. This is one that works without a Wii console. There are USB-powered or battery powered sensor bars out there hat one can buy. Details about the sensor bar on wiibrew.org.

  4. Root access to the machine you want to use the driver on (in most cases).

Ready to start?

Why does this project exist?

There are two different wiimote drivers for Linux out there that I know about:

  • xorg-input-xwiimote

    This driver works fine, but only for X11. It is an X11 mouse driver afterall. For newer operating systems shipping with Wayland, this is a deal-breaker and the driver does not work.

  • wminput of libcwiid

    libcwiid seems to the the original user-space driver to get the wiimote to work. Though the code is old, and the wminput-driver does not work well at all.

I found the implementation of xorg-input-xwiimote good, but not good enough. There was no easily configurable pointer calibarion for the driver so finding the exact right relation between screen coordinates and the sensor bar was a hassle. The keymap was also hardcoded, there was no horizontal detection in the driver, the driver relied on having a single IR-LED opposed to a standard wiimote sensor bar, and, of course, it was X11 based, and I wanted something that also worked on wayland.

So this project takes all the good ideas fron xorg-input-xwiimote but interfaces with libevdev instead of X11. libevdev is the input library for libinput which works for both X11 and Wayland. In addition, the project contains a configuration utility that allows configuring the xwiimote driver without needing to restart the driver.

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