W.I.P-- WiiMote LED Ripple Mod NEED feedback

DanGarc

WiiChat Member
Mar 25, 2007
6
0
Hey guys... I came from wiimotemods.com, but that community isnt actually helping me out much. I come to you for help because I want to complete a pretty sick mod-- I only have a concept and electrical schematic, so I just ask that you check out what I got on that site, then let me know what I can do, ask questions, so on and so forth.

Original Thread
located on wiimods.

Warning! This is a SERIOUS mod, and will require some electronics knowledge.

*EDIT*
Finished the graphic schematic-- hopefully this will shed some new light.
Fixed Mislabeling on top

Schematic:



Let Po... represent output (to LED)
Let P... represent corresponding test point output (prior to new circuitry)
Let P1.&.P4... represent simutanious flash

Let &... represent AND gate
Let (+)... represent XOR gate

P1&P2, P3&P4 Two Outputs
(P1&P2)&(P3&P4) One Output


P1(+)(P1&P2) to P1o; to Decade Counter Reset
P2(+)(P1&P2) to P2o; to Decade Counter Reset

P3(+)(P3&P4) to P3o; to Decade Counter Reset
P4(+)(P3&P4) to P4o; to Decade Counter Reset

(P1.&.P4) to Decade Counter CPo

Decade Counter
Pins 1, 2, 3, 4 to P1o, P2o, P3o, P4o

Explanation:

1x 7490 Decade Counter
1x 7408 AND Gate
1x 7486 XOR Gate
Lots... and lots... of wiring.

Limited space requires:
Custom housing?
Trimmed internals?

On boot, the WiiMote flares all four LEDs simutaniously. Normally, this doesn't bother anyone, unless they swapped out the LED colors, and wired additional LEDs to the player indicaters SPECIFICALLY.

NOTE: This ripple effect can be carried over to ALL additional LEDs, explanation further below.

By combining a logic chip called the AND logic gate, with the XOR gate in conjunction with a Decade Counter, the WiiMote should be able to cycle through it's player indicaters at sync start from 1 to 4 instead of all 4, then select the correct player at sync.

The Decade Counter will be the chip to cycle the wiimote player indicaters-- it has multiple outputs, but one input. The counter will ONLY move to the next output when it recieves both a high AND a low pulse from it's input.

Problems:
WiiMote has 4 inputs.
No clock generator in WiiMote

Solution:
All 4 inputs will be linked, 1v1 and 2v2. This means that we will use an AND gate, which only allows parallel HIGH inputs to generate a HIGH, to link players 1 and 2 together. Then, we do the same for 3 and 4. This is the 1v1 portion.

The 2v2 is where we have TWO inputs compounded into ONE output, but from those, still have TWO additional inputs. 1&2, and 3&4. So, we use another AND gate to compound them further-- (1&2) & (3&4). This creates ONE output from 2 inputs-- those two inputs used to be an output for 2 more inputs. So, our last result is the output of 4 inputs, our signal sent from the WiiMote to designate what to flash on the LEDs.

We now take our output from (1.&.4) to connect to the clock point of the decade counter.

Problems:
Still don't have a clock generator on the Wiimote

Solution:
The sync. lights flashing will act as our clock. Alternating ON and OFF to flash the LEDs still creates the HIlow pattern of a clock generator, so, we use this to cycle-- albeit slowly. Since we're going for a nice visual effect, it should suit quite nicely, anyway.

So we have the clock generator, we have a cycle, but how do we get the LEDs to display the correct player when chosen?

Problem:
Cannot identify one of FOUR players from ONE input

Solution:
For this, we back up in our circuit a bit to the first two sets of AND gates. Now, we introduce the XOR gate, exclusive or. This gate ONLY provides a HIGH response, required to light an LED, when ONE of the TWO inputs, no more no less, is HIGH.

XOR Gate A's first input comes from P1. The second, comes from the output of the P1&P2 gate. If all lights are flashing, they will all either be on, or off-- neither of which will produce a HIGH response from the XOR. Follow this through for each P1-P4, link them to the output of whatever gate they currently reside on.

P2, P1&P2
P3, P3&P4
P4, P3&P4

Again, when flashing, ALL points are either HIGH or low. When the system finally selects a player, all points but that one will turn to LOW. So, say we operate on P3 when P1,2, and 3 go out. The XOR gates that utilize the input of each P will still stay low, but for P3 the output is HIGH. Since P4 is low, logic dictates on the AND gate P3 and P4 reside on that the output would be LOW.

P3 = HIGH
P3&P4 = LOW
Therefore, the condition is met that ONE input is high-- XOR outputs a HIGH signal.

For the XOR outputs, they will generate TWO outputs, rather, we are splitting the signal into TWO parts. All FOUR of the outputs will first go to the Decade Counter Reset pins-- this clears the counter data, and jumps the circuit. The LEDs will not cycle-- and since it is not recieving a clock HIGH, will not generate an output. Decade is dead at this time.

The second wire each XOR will provide bypasses the entire circuit and places itself at the base of each LED. For example, the XOR that uses ONLY P1 as an input goes to the P1 LED. These are now are Po outputs.

Congradulations, this circuit is now complete, and your LEDs should ripple if you understand the implications of each chip and how to rig them up.

To connect your exist LED mods to the ripple effect, just connect each corresponding LED to the point furthest past ALL the wiring on the player indicater-- as close to the LED as possible so it comes AFTER your decade counter AND XOR gates. Match them up right, and your WiiMote will light up and shift colors.


If you don't know how to read your logic chips, look up the Pin Configurations of each logic gate.



This is a standard wiimote


This is a wiimote with the player indicator/color change mod, plus my clock ripple mod.


This is done during sync, instead of flashing. Upon successful sync, it'll stop rippling and choose the correct player.

More applications would be to wire additional LEDs behind the A button, where I got the idea for this for.
You see, when you wired more colored LEDs behind the A button, it looked awesome during play, but synching it got an ugly mesh of all 4 colors-- they were connected to the player indicators that flashed ALL at the same time. Rippling them, the A button will now cycle through all available colors before finally settling on the color of choice.


As you can see, if you backlit with the standard flash, it looked... ugly.


Apply my mod during sync, and you get this.


Feedback appreciated!
 
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  • Thread Starter
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  • #3
its a mod i'm working on-- it allows the player indicaters to flash sequentially instead of simutaniously when the wiimote is sync'ing up.

the application to this is kinda mundane if you use it by yourself, nobody really just wants to see four blue lights slowly tick 1, 2, 3, 4, repeat. But if you apply other mods like matching the player indicators to the corresponding player colors (blue, red, green, yellow) then you start seeing something kinda noteworthy.

This mod in itself truely shines when you hook up a color respondant backlight mod to the trailing end of the mod-- when the wiimote syncs up, your wiimote will cycle all 4 player colors instead of flashing alternately, then it'll select the correct color and player when its supposed to.

what you see is the schematic made to recircuit the insides of the wiimote to cycle instead of flash-- i didnt include anything for replacing LEDs, just where to put them.

Give me a second, and I'll make a GIF to demonstrate the point.
 
I see where you're going, and it seems like a cool idea if you want to take he time to do the wiring. But it seems useless for everything but Wii sports. Unless I'm missing the point.
 
Hmmm a good idea but not a very helpful mod if you ask me. Wouldnt your time be better spend on a more useful mod
 
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  • #6
There arent alot of very useful mods. They're all aesthetic, all this does is make the aesthetic's better. So in my honest opinion, this mod is probably more useful than the lighting itself, as it truely will allow a light mod's potential to fully come out.

What kind of useful mod are you looking for? There are really only LED and case mod's out there-- how much more useful can you get?
 
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  • #7
Migrated content from old site, and bottom of this page, to the top. All the information is up there now.
 
This is great work man. Very well thought out and such. I think the level of difficulty in terms of implementing it turns alot of people off though. How many people actually mod the LEDs in their wiimote let alone do something like this. I'm a third year electrical engineer in college and I'd still be hesitant to do something like this.

I gotta say it's a really cool idea and as I said very well thought out.
 
  • Thread Starter
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  • #9
you'd be surprised how many people mod their wiimotes-- i know at least 300 people, community based of course, that do this. now, 300 isnt much compared to an entire non modding community, but I'm bringing this to the general public to let people know it's there.

electrical engineer, eh?
what do you think of the model-- does it make sense?
 
I would much rather invest my time into something such as finding a loop whole in the wii's firmware to enable homebrew and the likes.
 
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  • #11
you're talking hacking the firmware-- not modding. i'm a certified ethical hacker, and hence the title, i'm kinda stricken by law NOT to do that kind of stuff. unfortunate, i know.

I'd love that, though.

For all you know, I could've done it, but can't tell you how to do it... ;-)

But no, i haven't. Let me know if you find it!

(edit)
And yes. There's a profession called Certified Ethical Hacking-- I highly recommend it, its a riot! Great fun! :D
 
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