HOWTO: Wii Remote in Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10)

[Toshibawarrior]

I had my wii remote working in Hardy, but when I upgraded to Intrepid, it no longer works. It does find the address, but will not connect. When I move the dongle to another computer with hardy it works...

what is new in intrepid that would cause this?

I have been searching and there does not seem to be a solution, other than try another dongle. With the dongle on another machine with hardy working, I do not believe it is a dongle problem...

I will try the hardy live cd next with the intrepid pc hardware too see if it truely is an intrepid problem...

any other suggestions would be appreciated.

Ok, first of all...Welcome!

Second, since you upgraded from Hardy to Intrepid you most likely have a big mess of dependencies and libraries mixed together...

First thing to check here is:

Are you using the gksudo before wminput commands?

Second thing to check would be:

Do you have libbluetooth2 and libbluetooth3 installed? If you have both (most probably you do since you upgraded) get rid of both by Completely Removing them with Synaptic and then installing libbluetooth3 only.

Most upgrades from Hardy to Intrepid end up in disaster and duplicated libraries...

Try these to steps first...and if it doesn't work, report back and let me know what happened.

As a side note: if these steps don't work, get your important data backed up since there's a 99% chance that a fresh install is in need to be done...most problems that emerge from faulty upgrades are extremely hard to fix...the only "easy" way is to backup, delete, format and install anew...sad but true.

[pmontini]

Thanks for the help, but no luck. I did a fresh install of intredid and have the same problems... I get the address, but no connection. I ran the hardy livecd and it connect no problems. I am thinking I will rebuild the previous uinput module. Is it possible to rebuild uinput for intrepid at the hardy level? or has anyone tried this?

or should I look into any other drivers/files?

Thanks!

[Toshibawarrior]

Thanks for the help, but no luck. I did a fresh install of intredid and have the same problems... I get the address, but no connection. I ran the hardy livecd and it connect no problems. I am thinking I will rebuild the previous uinput module. Is it possible to rebuild uinput for intrepid at the hardy level? or has anyone tried this?

or should I look into any other drivers/files?

Thanks!

I really don't know if it'd be possible to build uinput for Hardy in Intrepid...

But...have you used other dongles?...Maybe...just maybe...your current dongle is not recognized by Intrepid...

I'm sorry but I've never tried to build "older" programs/modules in intrepid except for ffmpeg and with no luck...

Maybe someone here has more "building" skills than me !

I really hope you can fix this soon!

[Trebaruna]

Haven't checked in for some time.

Thanks for the advice, I'll consider adjusting the sensors' range, but that isn't the core of the problem. The Wii treats the remote as out of range when the cursor hits the edge of the screen, not when it loses sight of the sensors. It has a bounding box representing the screen. So the remote move back in range when it reenters that box, not as soon as it regains orientation with its sensors. wminput would work better if it also used such a bounding box.

Anyway: I've got my setup working with my homebrew sensor bar and wii mote synced to the computer. The daemon is set to start when I log in. So far, so good. Here's the problem:
when my machine wakes up from stand by, the daemon has died. It reports having caught some signal or other (will get back to you on the exact message).

Clearly, I'd like it to resume its work after waking up. Is there some setting, flag, whatever that I can pass wminput? Can I stick a small script running the daemon somewhere in Ubuntu's bowels so the system will just start it every time..?

[Toshibawarrior]

Haven't checked in for some time.

Thanks for the advice, I'll consider adjusting the sensors' range, but that isn't the core of the problem. The Wii treats the remote as out of range when the cursor hits the edge of the screen, not when it loses sight of the sensors. It has a bounding box representing the screen. So the remote move back in range when it reenters that box, not as soon as it regains orientation with its sensors. wminput would work better if it also used such a bounding box.

Anyway: I've got my setup working with my homebrew sensor bar and wii mote synced to the computer. The daemon is set to start when I log in. So far, so good. Here's the problem:
when my machine wakes up from stand by, the daemon has died. It reports having caught some signal or other (will get back to you on the exact message).

Clearly, I'd like it to resume its work after waking up. Is there some setting, flag, whatever that I can pass wminput? Can I stick a small script running the daemon somewhere in Ubuntu's bowels so the system will just start it every time..?

Well...apparently Ubuntu always has problems with standby/sleep...

When you say the daemon, you mean the daemon that wminput starts, or the uinput stuff in rc.local?...

Come back with this info and I'll try to help! Sorry for my lateness in responding but I've been playing with openSUSE these days and haven't got around to get wireless working...anyway, let me know!

[joesnose]

good guide, i personally upgraded from hardy to intrepid only to find my nice panel icons for my wiimote didn't work anymore. i edited etc/modules and added uinput to the list, still no joy!

gksudo was not working for me, so i changed the permissions as described in the first page. this worked, although the deamon does not seem to persist, i have to push the panel icon twice to get it to connect, so if i power off the wiimote, it does not get rediscovered when i push the 1 and 2 buttons.

i can live with this , just happy my wiimote is working again.

an extra note for those building sensor bars, if you want to use the wiimote up close, make your ir leds about 3 inches apart. and if you want to use it further away, 8 inches apart is good.

[Rhubarb]

an extra note for those building sensor bars, if you want to use the wiimote up close, make your ir leds about 3 inches apart. and if you want to use it further away, 8 inches apart is good.

I've found that one IR LED is fine for this (rather than having 2).
Or if distance is important, cluster a few IR LEDs together in one spot.

I haven't actually tried out using the daemon, so that I can turn my wiimote off, then on again to test the daemon's persistance.
- I'll test this out for myself during the next few days

[nattyebola]

thanks a lot man !

[Toshibawarrior]

thanks a lot man !

You're welcome! Remember to hit the "Thanks" button on the lower right corner of the post you found useful! That way the users can have higher "Thanks stats" and everyone can know what you liked the most!

Just a little reminder. !

[pmontini]

Thanks for all the help, but I could not find a way to rebuild modules, so I bought a new micro usb dongle and everything works perfectly!

hardy 8.04 - Cyber-blue Micro Usb Dongle = Works out of box with Wiimote
Intrepid 8.10 - Cyber-blue Micro Usb Dongle = Does not work with Wiimote

Intrepid 8.10 - Kensington Usb Micro Dongle = Works out of box with Wiimote