Front Projection Wii Sensor Bar Hack
news via kotaku
As I predicted way back when Nintendo first announced the sensor bar for the WIi, people who front projection systems are sorta screwed. Actually, they are totally screwed unless their projector is mounted within a dozen feet or so of the surface they are projecting on.
One gamer, whose distance between projector and wall is 30-feet, decided to hack apart that super thin sensor wire and make his own extra-long connection.
Stuck without a way to make the console work as I needed a 30' sensor bar connection and not seeing anyone else take the plunge yet, I snipped my sensor bar wire in order to splice in an extension.
The wire is 2 conductor stranded and very thin. There's white fabric shielding around the wires and a couple strands of white shielding wrapped up with the wires. The 2 conductor wires are twisted. So, I stripped the lines back and separated to the two wires. Again, they are very fine, thin strands. One is red and one is orange.
I cut a short segment of 24 gauge, 2 conductor wire I bought at Radio Shack, and proceeded to solder it in for testing. I figured no sense using a huge wire length just to verify if this works. The sensor bar wire doesn't take to solder too well. It was resistant to sticking. Finally, though, I got the solder to stick and went to test.
Long story short, he redid the solder three times before it worked, which may have been because of a bad solder or because the hacker forgot to recycle his Wii during the testing phase.
