wii-js

The Nintendo Wii is an entertainment system with an utterly massive install base, and when you couple it with the fact that it's got a web browser (mostly) built in, there's a lot of potential for third party development. Sadly, few have opted to do any sort of development for it. While it doesn't help that Nintendo pretty much dropped the ball on this opportunity, the experience of browsing the web on the Wii isn't actually that compelling to begin with.

That said, I think this can serve one other purpose: it's an ideal environment to teach children how to program! I created this library to sanitize Wii interaction with webpages in the browser, as it's notoriously crippled. It aims to offer a solid, documented, performant API that's easy to understand and pick up. With this library, you can have up to 4 Wii-motes interacting with your webpage at once, a dynamic not found in other web browsing mediums.

Questions, comments, criticism and praise can be directed to me at the following outlets:

• You can email me at ryan [at] venodesigns (dot) net.
• You can hit me up on Twitter: @ryanmcgrath
• Contact me through my website
• Technical issues can be filed on the wii-js GitHub Issues Tracker

Example Usage

var wiimote = new Wii.Remote(1, {horizontal: true}),
    wiimote2 = new Wii.Remote(2, {horizontal: true});

wiimote.when('pressed_a', function() {
    alert('Wiimote #1 pressed the A Button!');
});

wiimote2.when('pressed_a', function() {
	alert('Wiimote #2 pressed the A Button!');
});

Technical Documentation

The largest issue with making interactive pages that work with the Wii has been that the API has been nothing short of a black hole. When you actually begin to dig in and figure out what's going on, it gets even uglier to see - the primary wiimote, for instance, has a totally different set of signals than the other three.

wii-js abstracts away most of these differences and/or problems, and works on a very simple event-dispatch system. What this means is that you create an instance of a Wii Remote, subscribe to events, and provide a function to get called when that event has occurred. The following syntax should explain this:

wiimote.when('event_name_here', function() { /* My callback function */ });

When instantiating a Wii Remote instance, you can choose to have the library interpret directional pad controls in horizontal or vertical mode. You can change this at any point, if you want, by simply swapping the property.

var wiimote = new Wii.Remote(1, {horizontal: true}); // Horizontal controls
var wiimote = new Wii.Remote(1, {horizontal: false}); // Vertical controls

wiimote.opts.horizontal = true; // Change to horizontal scheme.

You can listen for the following events on all controllers:

• pressed_up - The up button was pressed.
• pressed_down - The down button was pressed.
• pressed_left - The left button was pressed.
• pressed_right - The right button was pressed.
• pressed_a - The A button was pressed.
• pressed_1 - The 1 button was pressed. (Note: On controller 1, this triggers a menu - work in progress...)
• pressed_2 - The 2 button was pressed.
• pressed_plus - The plus (+) button was pressed.
• pressed_minus - The minus (-) button was pressed.
• roll_change - The roll of the controller (balance) changed. You can get the current roll in radians with "this.roll"; positive is upright, negative is the other.
• distance_change - The distance of the wiimote (in meters) from the TV/sensor bar has changed. This event isn't totally reliable, but should work for most cases.

You can listen for the following events on extra controllers, but not the primary controller.

• pressed_b - The B button was pressed.
• pressed_c - The C button (on the Nunchuk) was pressed.
• pressed_z - The Z button (on the Nunchuk) was pressed.

You can also get the following properties from any Wii Remote instance; they will return "undefined" if the remote isn't able to see the TV/sensor bar, so be sure to check this!

• x - The x coordinate where the Wii Remote is pointing to on the screen. Generally between 0 and 800, but can be more on wide pages.
• y - The y coordinate where the Wii Remote is pointing to on the screen. Odd one; can be found as low as -48, as high as the height of the current webpage + toolbar height, if enabled. Tinker with this one for your purposes.

Why the button limitations?

The Nintendo Wii treats the primary controller differently than the other ones, and doesn't report any action from the Nunchuk, nor does it report when someone has pressed the "B" button on the primary controller (as it's used for scrolling a page).

The Wii Browser also doesn't report data for Gamecube controllers, the Classic controller, or any other accessories.

It's a work in progress to see what can be done about these, but it's impossible to guarantee anything will come out of it unless Nintendo and/or Opera can come out with something new.

Licensing, etc

wii-js is released under an MIT license. Just provide credit where need be if you choose to use this, it's taken quite a bit of my time to decipher the utterly random pieces and intricacies of this Javascript engine. ;)