Wii mods section

Now that the Wii is out, mods for this console were simply inevatible to appear. I've made some mods that I'd like to share with you:

Classic Controller Wire back to top mod tutorial (pdf, 2mb)

What more do I need to say? Using only some simple tools and maximum an hour of your time you can put the wire of you classic controller back to where it belongs. Open the PDF-file for instructions.

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Illuminated Wii foot

Using only 1 bright LED and a USB-cable (for power) you can make a nice effect:

You can see that inside the foot an LED is placed that shines into the side of the disc. This way the edge of the disc gives a nice halo effect.

I'm still wondering... would a white LED look better? Maybe someone would like to try it out for me :)

I made this mod in like a quick hour. I had nothing to do for an hour, thought of this mod, got curious, got working (quick and dirty), and ended up with this. Do you like it?

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Wiimotion Plus built inside Wiimote!

I built the new Nintendo Wiimotion Plus (WM+) inside a Wiimote! Yes, it is possible to enjoy WM+ games without having this extra brick connected to your Wiimote. I also made the nunchuck work, so it's fully functional:

For this I opened up my Wiimote and I started melting, grinding and filing, with the following (not so pretty) result:

Meanwhile I removed the WM+ circuit board out of its casing and removed the two connectors. The circuit board fits inside the space that I created. Also I soldered some replacing wires to it.

At first I didn't know if I had to bypass the connector of the Wiimote, in the end it appeared that I had. So I desoldered the connector and bent the pins away from the circuit board and soldered wires to it:

The wires are connected to where normally the connector's pins are connected. These pins are now connected to the WM+ instead, as shown on the previous picture. I used double wires because they were very thin, so just to be sure:

Under the battery lid you can see that the clamp of the lid won't fit in its hole anymore. I use a battery pack that is combined with a lid, and that thing stays put fine without the clamp, so I broke it off.

Also you can see that I can't put screws in the lower two holes anymore, but nevertheless everything still stays together pretty well, I can always glue it if necessary:

So far everything works fine, I can't tell the difference between playing with this or with an external WM+, it plays just as well.

Of course there is one last issue: battery life. With the WM+ connected the batteries drain faster, even when you are not playing a game that actually uses the WM+. The big question is: how bad is it? To answer this I took my multimeter to see what the difference is in power usage with and without the WM+ connected. The conclusion is that leaving the WM+ connected at all times (which is the case with this mod), the batteries run out about 3% faster compared to disconnecting it (when you play non WM+ games).

I heard about some people actually liking the extra 'substance' to their Wiimote. So for fun I used the WM+ casing and its connectors to make an empty dummy WM+. From the outside it just looks like an ordinary WM+ and you can just click it on and also just connect a nunchuck to it. The only difference is that there is no circuitry inside it :).