Wii Balance board HID device - How to connect

Gaspar

Hi there,

one of my neighbours threw away two Wii Balance boards, so I picked them up :-)

I've managed windows to see the board: I had to add it via Devices and Printers (since the intuitive path adding it over Bluetooth & other devices would not work. Once connected the board appears also on the Bluetooth devices window).

OK: Windows sees the board as Nintendo VRL-WBC-01.

Naïve as I am I've tried to see the data stream directly in ISDORA (Communications/Stream Setup) chosing HID. Nothing happens.

Since I've never used HID detection, I tried to see if I could see my mouse, but that fails as well.

Neither my touchpad, not my wireless mouse are detected in the stream setup. However both work with the mouse watcher. Should I be able to see them? (yes Ignore Mouse is unchecked).

So even this is not urgent at all, any help on this would be appreciated.

Cheers.

Woland

@gaspar

I highly doubt that Wii Balance boards will show up as HID because they're not really designed to be detected by computers running Windows or macOS, they're a proprietary controller for proprietary Nintendo hardware. What you want to do is poke around online looking for software and github solutions where people have either hacked the devices or found a way to use middleware to translate the data from that device to OSC or MIDI. Once you have the data in the form of OSC or MIDI, you can bring it into Isadora. For example, the way to get WiiMotes data into Isadora on macOS is software called OSCulator.

Gaspar

@woland said:

What you want to do is poke around online looking for software and github solutions where people have either hacked the devices or found a way to use middleware to translate the data from that device to OSC or MIDI. Once you have the data in the form of OSC or MIDI, you can bring it

Hi L,
thanks for that, I've seen various Osculator posts around. And for windows there seem to be options too, but all I've seen so far had issues. I Just went the short route first, as I read the Board was using the bluetooth HID protocol and ISADORA "does read HID devices" :-)

Just out of curiosity, Why are my mouse and touchpad not seen in the HID detection window?

I'm leaving for some time and can't take the balance boards with me, so I might try again after summer and will post here if I find anything useful.

Here's the most interesting link I found so far for windows users:
https://www.julianloehr.de/edu...

elizachris

@Gaspar

I love using weird controllers for theatre! I'm not familiar with how the balance board operates but I know where I would start. TouchOSC is my best friend for sending MIDI and OSC messages from controllers.

First download touchOSC go to connections (looks like a chain link in the top right corner), it would be under gamepad if its detected. If it is, select it. Then open the log (view>toggle log) and figure out what sort of controller data is being output. If it outputs anything, my guess it it would map the pressure to the right and left sticks, and the triggers, sense those values aren't binary/boolean.

If that doesn't work you're going to need to get SDL2 Gamepad tool. Follow the instructions there to map, it is a bit complicated but it's pretty intuitive once you get the hang of it. The mapping part might be tricky because you have to ,but my assumption is that there are sensors in the corners, so maybe try stepping on each individual sensor.

If the mapping with SDL2 is too difficult or even impossible,doesn't work I just found this windows only tool which seems to turn the balance board into a controller.

Assuming TouchOSC is getting input: create a new file, open up the file, add a fader for each sensor you want data from. Next on the right side of the screen and scroll down to messages, then create a new gamepad message and an OSC/MIDI message. Since its isadora your message is just whatever you set it to, but make sure you send out the argument "x". Make sure your OSC/MIDI ports, devices and IP addresses are lined up.

I hope this helps and I'd love to hear about any progress!

Juriaan

@elizachris

Hi there!

Thank you so much for sharing your input :)

And welcome to the forum