Saturday, August 1, 2009

Wii Sensor Bar

Wii Sensor Bar - Tips, Tricks, and Hacks! Improve Your Reception

Executive Summary about Wii Sensor Bar by Blake Mackey



So you plug in your wii, get it all setup, play your favourite games. But do you ever give a second though to how the sensor bar works? Probably not unless you experience problems with it. I'll do my best in this article to explain it is theory of operation. So it's called a sensor bar right? So what is I old you it isn't a sensor bar at all? Most people assume that a signal is somehow sent from the wiimote and is captured by the sensor bar.

Theory of Operation

The wii sensor bar is just two constant sources of infrared light. The WiiMote views these two points of light and guages its position as you move the WiiMote and these points of light change. If you roll left and right, the points roll. As you move up and down or left and right, the references move the opposite direction. If you move closer, the points of reference move farther apart. Move farther away and the points get closer together. If you have trouble visualizing this, go into your Wii settings, and Sensor setup.

Troubleshooting

So you're playing your Nintendo Wii, and your cursor is always jumping erratically, what do you do? Well, first since the WiiMote is looking for infrared light to use as its reference, make sure the only infrared light it sees is from the Sensor Bar. Since infrared light is heat, get rid of all points of light and heat behind your Wii Sensor Bar. Since this light and heat and be reflected, take a look for things that can reflect behind your sensor bar also.

Cool Tricks

Since your WiiMote "sees" infrared light, you can use it to view infrared signals! Go into your sensor setup again, point your TV remote at the WiiMote and change channels, you should see your screen displaying the infrared signals.


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