Electronics, Lighting, & Gadgets - Asking all the smart cyclists, wii bike interface?

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globalrider
05-18-09, 06:31 PM
I know there are some commercial products- high end trainers with video interface that responds to you actions. Has anyone seen anything that would enable one to use the wii for this purpose? I was thinking of perverting a wii accessory perhaps with a wireless cyclecomputer. Anybody been down this path or seen anything like it posted somewhere?
AngrySaki
05-25-09, 12:35 AM
I built one using a gamecube controller for playing racing games in the hopes of making riding a trainer more fun. I did a pretty hack job because i don't know much about electronics. I used a parallel port on my PC to take the input from the sensor part of an old cycling computer I had (with some transistors in there somewhere). I had the PC "pulse" the output based on how fast I was riding which controlled the "A" button on the gamecube controller. That method worked fine for F-Zero and Mario Kart.
Unfortunately, it didn't overcome my extreme dislike of riding on a trainer, but it definately made it better. If I had someone to race against it would have probably been a lot of fun.
As you can tell in the picture, I never polished it up...
http://www.angrysaki.com/Media/GCBike/gcbike2.jpg
(http://www.angrysaki.com/GCBike.aspx)
It is possible though, and wasn't too too much work.
edit: I didn't include any real instructions because i don't remember exactly what i did. If you're interested in trying to build you're own in similarily to what I did, i can offer general advice as to what I did, and I might still have the software I wrote somewhere.