2008-2009-Wii Beat

WiiBeat Project

by Lawrence Lee and Sardar Yumatov

We decided to implement a program that would enable the user to »play« on a set of drums using the Wiimote. Initially, we planned to have an interface consisting of five drums that the user could »hit« to generate sound. We decided to use WiiUseJ to build a Java implementation of the concept. We also built a custom infra-red emitter to track the position of the controller.

We decided to use MIDI generated sound, and decided that the program should also be able to switch between instruments, since only 5 would be available on the screen at any one time. To achieve this, we implemented switching via the D-pad on the Wiimote. In this way all virtual MIDI instruments would be available if we ever wanted to expand the program. We also wanted to implement the recording of MIDI samples in time lines to enable complex beats.

In the end, we achieved most of what we wanted. We did not implement the recording of MIDI samples, but we implemented IR tracking of the Wiimote, enabling the playing of the drums. We used the accelerometer to determine the strength with which the sound is played. We did not manage to fit 5 drums on screen, instead reducing the number to 3. This was because of the imprecision of the IR camera, but we discovered at a late stage in the project that this was solveable by introducing more IR lights in a row, one group for each drum. Sadly, this was far too late in the project to implement it.