Using a Nintendo Wii controller with Lego Mindstorms

A while ago, while organising a Lego Mindstorms control day at a school, the class teacher emailed me and asked "have you seen the YouTube video of someone controlling the Mindstorms robot with a Wii controller?"  Now, I have to be honest and say this was like a red rag to a bull as I'm a bit of a Lego freak anyway, which makes the opportunity to work with schools with the Lego Mindstorms and Lego WeDo kits one of the most enjoyable parts of my role.  I even (confession time) had Lego for Christmas this year (see below pic) which combined with Star Wars pretty much confirms my geek status.

Unfortunately, our Nintendo Wii had been lent out to a school so the chance to try this for myself had to wait for it's return.  Having done a little research in the meantime, my attempts were based on the following 3 articles:
1) http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_7797536_control-mindstorm-wii-remote.html
2) http://www.zenophotos.com/Articles/connect_wii_mote_to_computer.html
3) http://www.zenophotos.com/Articles/wii_nxt_remote.html

The first task was to connect both the Wii remote and the Lego NXT block to my laptop via the built in Bluetooth.  The articles above suggested various bits of software but to be fair, they caused me more problems than they were worth (probably my laptop more than the software - very temperamental!).  Once I updated the laptop's built in software, this worked fine and both connected as expected.

Next was to use the recommended software (GlovePIE) to program the Wii remote to coincide with 'button presses' of the keyboard e.g. left direction button=F1 etc.  I started off with the program found in article 1 but it was apparent that it wasn't correct as GlovePIE was showing a couple of errors.  Comparing that article with the code found in article 3 I changed:

Line 1: Leds = 9 to be wiimote.Leds = 9
Line 6: Key.F5 = Wiimote1. to be Key.F5 = Wiimote1.A

So now the code was identical to that in article 3 and had the desired effect that the 4 directional buttons plus button A were assigned to the first five function keys.

Finally, I needed to use the final piece of software (OnBrick) to allocate those five function keys to programs on the NXT Block.  Both articles 1 and 3 suggest programs for this but I adapted them as they didn't fit the model I had built. So I went with:

F1 = motor B fwd 50 degrees - Wii left button
F2 = motor C fwd 50 degrees - Wii right button
F3 = move forward (forever) - Wii up button
F4 = move backward (forever) - Wii down button
F5 = stop - Wii button A

With baited breath I tested this out and to my delight I had some success.  I say some, because for whatever reason OnBrick kept crashing (probably my laptop again).  However, I had enough success to video my achievement and post my own video on YouTube (below).  Having gone through all this it reminded me of how lucky I am to (occasionally at least) have the time to play and troubleshoot something like this that classroom teachers might not.  The next step is to get a Bluetooth adapter that can go to schools with the Mindstorms boxes so that for schools that have a Wii, I can add this level of programming to the repertoire of programs we already teach when appropriate.