L-Wii

[supertazon]

Great work keep it up! I really dig the approach of using the latest generation console controllers with a Wii, it goes beyond portablizing! Can't wait to see the prototype

 

[Nos_E3ks]

This is looking great, If I had more Skill I would try to build this but I have little to no skill building portables.

 

[Luca]

Finally did a battery test with a trimmed Wii after a mouser order arrived and I could repair my PMS. Had to use a larger battery than I will eventually use, since I overcharged the correct one.. somehow..

It ran for about 3 hours which is not too bad actually:

Compared to the battery I want to use (100*95*7), this battery is 5mm shorter (100*100*7)

So, assuming the batteries are similar in all ways but size::
Large battery volume = 100*100*7 = 7.000 cm^3
Small battery volume = 100*95*7 = 6.650 cm^3
That's a ratio of 0,95..
Measurement was ~3 hours, so small battery battery life should be 3*0,95 which is ~2,85 hours. But, this is without anything attached...

So:
The screen runs at ~3W which is kinda shitty now that I think about it. Anyway, that's about 1/2 what the Wii uses, so:
Battery life = 2,85-33.3% = ~1.9 hours

Wasn't really expecting much from these cells, so 2 hours is fair I think. But I'll let you guys decide... Next step is assembling the board I ordered after it gets out of DHL limbo

So yeah

 

[Luca]

Before the boards arrive, I thought I'd program and test the ESP32 and PIC32 which are part of Jackson's BT replacement system. I tried to do this almost a year ago, I got Jackson to help me through the process, but eventually determined I'd fried something because no wiimote would connect to the ESP32.

One year later, and I received a large mouser order with all new parts to assemble a new board - which I did, followed all the steps I did before which included finding older versions of all kinds of programs and installing them correctly. It finally flashes correctly - I think - and I connect it to a Wii:

Aand the wiimote doesn't connect - AGAIN >: (

Turns out I've been building Jackson's code wrong all this time, I look at the logs and apparently this version of the program ignores a pretty important error and just builds it anyway:

I don't speak fluent esp32-framework-whatever, but from this I mostly conclude that I need to ditch whatever version of esp-idf this is, find the correct version that Jackson used to compile this code (from what I gather it's v4.0-dev) which uses a mingw32 terminal and make instead of CMake..

This has all been kinda painful and I wonder if I'll ever get to compile this without redoing and modernizing Jackson's original code.. At least my boards are out of DHL limbo:

May the rest of you progress with great success. March forth my comrades!

 

[BocuD]

This is looking really good even with those setbacks. For the ESP32 issues i would try using a debugger, or at least get some external connection to a computer going (like UART) and add some code to tell you what its doing. If you do end up succeeding with making a portable in this form factor i'll have to say i'd be impressed haha, and it looks like you're definitely getting pretty close

 

[Luca]

I remember debugging it, but concluding that it just wasn't talking to the Wii for some reason. I'll look at it again, maybe I missed something. Unfortunately I'm going to school again which takes precious time away from me

But I'm convinced there's a problem with compiling using this "dirty" esp-idf setup, since this doesn't look good at all:

What I had to do to get this far is mix old and new versions of things. Basically on Jackson's github it says he used make commands like "make flash" which are commands that only work with GNU make, while I'm trying to use CMake. So I took an existing hello-world example, replaced the c files with Jackson's files and compiled it. Which gives these errors. Perhaps it's just a matter of placing the c files into an example project that uses btstack instead of a plain hello-world example. Or I use the latest version of esp-idf and its Legacy GNU support, although I haven't figured out how that works yet.. We'll see

 

[Luca]

Stupid shit
So I got started on this again finally. A different approach to getting Jackson's code to compile this time: I remember Jackson gave me the exact version of esp-idf he was running, so I figured out how to download it (v4.0-dev-667-gda13efc17) and how to install the exact toolchain version it required (crosstool-ng-1.22.0-80-g6c4433a)... I used the build command and this is what it spits out: (maybe it's related to the btstack version I'm using?/)

So yeah.

The very last thing to try is to try what I said 3 months ago and that I now realize I could have done now that I'm reading this worklog back

Or I use the latest version of esp-idf and its Legacy GNU support, although I haven't figured out how that works yet..

After that, either someone tells me I'm a moron and need to do X and Y or I will need to update Jackson's code to use the latest version - or something. Which means learning how to do exactly that. We'll see..

 

[Luca]

Nope. Doesn't work either. I don't know, guess I have to move away from the brief instructions Jackson provided and come up with my own.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯