Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hi, I'd like so set up my Wiimote Motion Plus so I can use it on my PC to play the Wii games I own in HD, use it as a replacement for the mouse and also play PC Resident Evil 5 with the Wii controls from RE4. I've got an official black 10 LED sensor bar, a Wiimote motion plus limited edition that came with Skyward Sword and a cheap USB Bluetooth dongle.

I'm reading a lot of old/conflicting info, could somebody confirm what the best stack is for this use that has auto pair/connect for the Wiimote motion plus and were I can get it? Do I need GlovePIE and/or Wiinremote or Smoothboard 2 and/or Smoothboard Air or are these outdated/replaced?

Whats the best way to convert the 10 LED sensor bar to USB? Can i just remove 4 LEDs to make it like the new 6 LED version and solder on the power from a USB cable?

If somebody could point me to the latest info on all this that would be great. Its really difficult to weed out the old info on this.

Thanks in advance.

Windows 7's default BT stack is fine. The Toshiba can be install over it and use on XP but is not needed. Some like it because it fixes pairing issues.

Thanks. So for Dolphin this looks straight forward, I can just use the Windows stack, pair the wimote to the Bluetooth dongle and Dolphin will take care of the rest. Sweet. Will this only auto pair/connect with dolphin in this scenario?

For windows mouse and PC RE5 will I need additional software, whats the best/latest?

Whats the recommended way of running a 10 LED sensor bar off USB power?

Thanks in advance.

I dont know anything about the PC RE5.

IMO a USB powered bar is bad. You only have 4.5 - 4.7 volts to work with. It really depends on you room condition though, lots of people on here use the usb bar and they like it. I use the ultra bar and use rechargeable batteries.

(11-16-2012, 05:28 AM)veng3r Wrote: [ -> ]Whats the recommended way of running a 10 LED sensor bar off USB power?

There is a post by admin89 somewhere, lemme find it :p

Edit: Now that I think of it USB isn't enough to power the offical sensors bars and you will need to also have another battery which will need to be changed sometimes

Edit 2: here:
http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-how-to-convert-nintendo-wii-sensor-bar-to-usb-sensor-bar

Thanks everyone. I'm only 2-3 meters from the sensor bar.

Yeah I saw that link and wanted a more elegant solution. Aren't the new sensor bars 6 LED and therefore will run off USB power? There is also a guy on ebay selling them and he said he removed 4 LEDs from the 10 LED version. I also saw this http://www.hunterdavis.com/2011/05/04/no-solder-no-tools-no-trouble-usb-wii-sensor-bar-conversion/ and was wondering if I can do that but just remove 4 LEDs and if so do I need to add/remove any other bits like resistors?

Could I just add a USB cable to the sensor bar and connect it to a USB wall plug/charger that gives 5v 700mah? Thinking about it could I not just cut the wires off either an old Nokia 5.7v 800mah charger or D-Link 5v 1.2amps power plug and solder them to the sensor bar power? How many volts and mah does the sensor bar need? Can I just hook a 9v battery up to it instead?

Thanks in advance. Its really appreciated.

in general no. You can burn up your lights. You need to pay attention to ohms law here. usb voltage is not 5.0 its around 4.7 it makes a big difference with the out put. You can change the resistor if you pay attention to the right value. They make usb bars, they make wireless bars, so why not just buy what you want?

1.2amps is an over kill. If it draws that much current your lights will smoke.

Thanks. So if I remove 4 LEDs (so it has 6 LEDs like the newer version) what resistor do I need to change it to to power it off USB?

Or if I purchased a cheap psu what would be the ideal output, 7v and 800mah?

I don't want to burn out the LEDs and I only need it to work from 2-3 meters away.

(I've already purchased a black official sensor bar so buying another one isn't an alternative)

Cheers for the help.

If you're bothering to change the resistors anyway, then it's just as easy to more or less bypass them completely, and leave all LEDs in place. The viewing angle of the LEDs in the 10 LED bar isn't great, so you'll get blind spots with fewer LEDs. I didn't do this with a genuine nintendo bar, but what I did was measure the voltage across and current through each bank of LEDs when it was connected to the Wii, and used Ohm's law (V=IR) to calculate the resistance I'd need to change the resistor(s) to in order to keep the current and voltage across each resistor constant if I dropped the input voltage to 5v. It turned out that I only needed approx 5 Ohms for each resistor in my non-genuine bar, so I used two diodes instead of two resistors to induce the small voltage drop I needed.

If you can be bothered working this out, you'll end up with a much more reliable bar, and if you know what you're doing with parallel circuits, you may even be able to make it still compatible with Wii power via a different cable (ie the original one that was on it).

Thanks for the info. It sounds like I'd just be better off giving it the right amount of power it needs as I have no idea how to work that out.

I think my my easiest option is to solder the right kind of power supply to it replacing the lead it comes with. What is the ideal volts and amps to power this with? There seems to be a lot of conflicting info on whether it needs 7v or 12v and I can't find any info on how many amps it needs.

Cheers