Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

One of the things I don’t like about the Wii is the fact that the sensor bar really needs to be permanently mounted on top of or below your TV for the controllers to be effective. As a result taking my Wii to a friend’s house really isn’t possible since I don’t want to have to keep sticking and unsticking the bar so I can travel with it.

Well thankfully now that the Wii is finally in the hands of a precious few it has been discovered that the sensor bar isn’t really a sensor bar at all, but simply a few strategically placed IR emitters that the Wii’s controllers use to triangulate their position. So ‘maker’ Brian Moore set out to build his own.

With just a bit of perf board, a few cables, some skillful soldering, four AA batteries, and a few IR LEDs, one can easily make their own, homemade Wii Sensor Bar, completely absent of wires. Enjoy!

Because I’m devoid of any and all soldering skills I unfortunately am not able to make my own sensor bar but since it looks pretty easy to do I imagine we’re going to see a lot of people making, selling and even possibly improving on Nintendo’s own design.

[ HOW TO - Make your own wireless Wii sensor bar! @ The MAKE: Blog ]