Friday Video: Nunchuk camera hack

by David Hinkle { Apr 11th 2008 at 7:00PM }

This one is fairly old, but pretty darn good. Well, good if you like robots. And nunchuks. Odds are if you're reading this site, you do. Success!

Anyway, the video may be lacking in the "how to do this" area, but it is certainly not lacking that cool factor. We can imagine a million different uses for a robotic camera such as this. Let us list a few:

Finding loose snack chips that fell behind the sofa
Powerpoint presentations (just attach a pointer to the camera's head)
Spying on your ex-girlfriend or boyfriend
Creating your very own Roboquad

[Via Hack A Day]

Tags: camera, mod, mods, nunchuk, robot

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Grimes @ Apr 11th 2008 10:24PM

This video drives me crazy: I had -no idea- the accelerometers in the nunchuk were anywhere near that sensitive. I honestly have thought all along that the wiimote itself had a relatively full suite of accelerometers and the nunchuk only had something more rudimentary, something that could mostly just detect whether or not the unit is being shaken, and maybe could tell left from right and up from down, but very little info in terms of how much you were moving it in any direction.

Why did I think this? Because I've yet to use any game except for wii sports boxing (which I've played very little, I just don't much like it) that uses the nunchuk motion for anything more precise than "shake it" (zelda, godfather) or "move it to the right to reload, forward to honk a car's horn" (godfather).

Where are the games that use this kind of 1-to-1 control????
Don't tell me you can't do it --- this dude is!

Are there games I haven't played (I haven't played all that many) that are taking advantage of these sweet-looking sensors? Please tell me, I want to play them.

Thanks!

Love,
Grimes

sepaar @ Apr 12th 2008 12:16PM

Yeah, the tilt functionality of the nunchuck is really better than it's given credit. It's not all just shake it. In Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 2, you have to tilt it up to gain altitude. It's the 1-1 kind of thing, but I'm not sure of anything that does do that. This video demonstrates more of the tilt in the Wii Sports baseball kind of way, with the bat. I'm not sure if that helps or not.

This was an awesome video. There are so many possibilities with this kind of thing.

Chyld989 @ Apr 11th 2008 11:10PM

That's 100% fantastic. Only thing I would have changed is making it so you have to hold the Z button to have the camera move, rather than hold the Z button to keep the camera still. I'd want to be able to set the nunchuk down once the camera angle was set without it screwing it up.