How to connect a Wii Remote to a Mac in Bootcamp

I tested the procedure to connect a Wii Remote (Wiimote) via Bluetooth with both a Mac Mini as well as a MacBook in Bootcamp with Windows XP. However, I cannot guarantee that it works with all Macs in Bootcamp. Definitely a problem is, that I’ve got only a German XP for testing purposes. Thus I can’t guarantee that I found the right translations for the names of buttons and labels in the XP Bluetooth wizard.

  1. In “Systems Preferences” go to “Bluetooth devices”
  2. If there already is a Wiimote listed, press “Remove” (yes, it’s tedious but I could not figure out another way.)
  3. Click “Add Device”
  4. Select “Device is ready to be found”
  5. On your Wiimote click both 1 & 2
  6. Immediately click “Search devices” in Bluetooth devices window.
  7. After Bluetooth devices have been found select “Nintendo RVL…” and click Next.
  8. Choose “No key necessary” and click “next”. Attention: Wiimote must still be blinking after this step. If you’ve done everything right a bubble should appear over Windows’ task bar which tells you “New HID device found”.
  9. Start Wii yourself’s demo.exe. A Dos shell window opens up with the message “Searching for Wiimote”
  10. Press 1 & 2 buttons of Wiimote if not blinking. Attention: demo.exe should now tell you “Connected!” behind “Searching for Wiimote”.
  11. Close demo.exe.
  12. Open up the application in which you want to use your Wiimote e.g. Johnny Chung Lee’s Wii Whiteboard. Attention: I was not able to use the exe that was provided on the download page of the project’s Sourceforge page. I had to open up the project in Visual Studio (I used the VS Express 2008 version that is freely available on Microsoft’s homepage) and press the play button in the menu bar (next to “debug”). Then everything worked just fine.
Update: Just figured out that I’ve forgot to upload Demo.exe. This is a Dos application, which shows the basic functionalities of the WiiLib project when a Wii remote is connected to the computer. Anyway you can download the source yourself from their page and compile it with Visual Studio (a VS project file is included) but somehow the compiled Demo.exe failed to work on some computers. So if you just take my version of Demo.exe you will be faster and the possibilty that you will be successful is higher. Demo.exe
 
I hope your virus scanner will try to kill if you’re about to open a downloaded, zipped exe from the Internet ;)

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Multi-Touch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “How to connect a Wii Remote to a Mac in Bootcamp”

  1. Patric Says:
    January 4, 2009 at 2:10 am | Reply

    I open up demo.exe and it won’t find my wiimote =(. It found it once then imediatly it lost connection it is still flashing ut it won’t find it. What do i do?

  2. Johannes Says:
    January 6, 2009 at 11:11 am | Reply

    what you could try to do is to remove the wii remote from the bluetooth devices list in windows.

  3. TheiPodDoctor Says:
    January 29, 2009 at 5:29 am | Reply

    I use my Wiimote to play video games on my Mac I downloaded a file from the internet.
    It works great with just about any online games I use it with an NES emulator and an Atari Emulator just fine but the keys are very programmable Im pretty sure it can be used with any games that work with a keyboard interface.

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