wiimote-uinput

30 June 2018

Requirements

<bluetooth/bluetooth.h>. Debian: apt-get install libbluetooth-dev
BlueZ utils. Debian: apt-get install bluez
Read/write access to /dev/uinput. (see below)

Build and install

$ make
$ sudo cp out/wiimote /usr/local/bin/wiimote
$ sudo mkdir /etc/wiimote
$ sudo cp etc/config /etc/wiimote/config

Then edit etc/wiimote/config, fill in your preferences and your device names and addresses.

Acquiring device addresses

Every Bluetooth device has a unique ID assigned at manufacture, just like a MAC address. To discover this ID, run hcitool scan and make the device discoverable (press '1' and '2' together). You should see something like this:

Scanning ...
  00:1E:35:72:07:CF  Nintendo RVL-CNT-01

Normal operation

To connect to a wiimote:

$ wiimote NameOfDevice

And you'll see something like this:

wiimote:INFO: Connecting to device (PSM 0x13)...
wiimote:INFO: Connecting to device (PSM 0x11)...
wiimote:INFO: Connected
wiimote:INFO: Launched daemon process 23544. Terminating foreground.

At that point, it's ready to use. To disconnect, you can kill the process (23544 in that example), or hold the wiimote's power button for a few seconds.

Enabling access to /dev/uinput

If you want to run the driver as root, go right ahead. Otherwise (recommended), you'll want to make /dev/uinput accessible. I did this with a new file /etc/udev/rules.d/99-wiimote.rules, containing this one line:

ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="uinput", MODE:="0660", GROUP:="plugdev"

The plugdev group is one you should be in by default.

This will take effect at the next restart. To make it effective without restarting:

$ sudo udevadm control --reload
$ sudo udevadm trigger
$ sudo modprobe -r uinput
$ sudo modprobe uinput

aksommerville / wiimote-uinput