Car modder repurposes Wiimote as accelerometer

Looking to collect a little acceleration / braking data on the cheap? Even if you're just scouting alternative uses for that oh-so-handy Wiimote, a recent project from klee just may suit your fancy. A proud owner of a 2000 Volkswagen Jetta managed to rig up a Wiimote-based tracking system that gathered information on g-forces, acceleration, turning, and overall speed, and thanks to a little Excel computation, the results are neatly graphed once the outing concludes. Of course, you may need a little help in the script writing department, by judging by the looks of things, most everything you need is awaiting you in the read link -- you know, except your own Wiimote and a Vee-Dub.

[Thanks, Matt]

[Chad B. @ Jul 31st 2007 3:53PM]

VWVORTEX FTW!!!!!

[audioeric @ Jul 31st 2007 4:03PM]

Now, they just need to take the HUD from Project Gotham Racing, and whenever you drift, start racking up the points.. Maybe once you get to your destination, if you haven't had an accident, you get a bonus for a clean race.. :-) Cool use for a Wiimote..

[Ryan P @ Jul 31st 2007 4:35PM]

Real world gamer score ftw!

[John @ Jul 31st 2007 4:16PM]

Me Me Me!

[Dave @ Jul 31st 2007 4:46PM]

in the near future, cars will be driven by wiimotes, not steering wheels

[jolly wood @ Jul 31st 2007 6:00PM]

i love recycled news!
its good to read the same stories everywhere, real fun! yah!

[Brendon @ Jul 31st 2007 8:09PM]

And you took the time to not only read the article again but also complain about reading it again.

[ravitek @ Jul 31st 2007 10:12PM]

anyone else catch the '13.37' timestamp for 0-60 in his Jetta?

[aaron @ Aug 1st 2007 9:35AM]

13.37 for 0-60? That's movin' . . .

I would hope that ET is for a quarter-mile, and not 0-60. If not, you'd have to be going downhill, with the wind pushing you, in a hurricane to put that on the track!

[Juaquin @ Aug 1st 2007 2:02AM]

I got this up and running last night, gave it a shot today, works pretty well. Right now I'm working on using the actual acceleration rather than the g value, because it rounds the g's to only two decimal places. Also, his original script just spews out readings into a .txt so I'm working on cleaning it up and finding an easier way to get the results into excel or maybe even a realtime display.

[chris fredette @ Aug 1st 2007 6:18PM]

If you get some sweet updated software, I would be interested in it. Thanks in advance.

[zz @ Aug 6th 2007 4:07AM]

i used to use macbook pro's internal accelerometer for such purpose ..