Re: [pygame] Adding Wii Remote support to pygame

[Luke Paireepinart <rabidpoobear@xxxxxxxxx>]

robomancer wrote:
> At the moment I am concentrating my efforts on the Linux platform, but 
> expect to make a cross-platform compatability layer for Windows (and 
> maybe Mac) once the initial effort is off the ground.
>
> Thanks,
> robomancer
Hey, Robomancer.
That sounds pretty awesome.

However, I have found, to put it bluntly, the current windows 'drivers' 
that are out for the wii-remote are not suitable for what I'd like to 
do.  It's not being handled as a new input-device: the 'drivers' re-mapp 
its functionality onto default keyboard/mouse keypresses/motions/etc.  
Basically it's emulating existing input devices.
On top of that, it doesn't work with the microsoft Bluetooth stack, so 
people have to install BlueSoleil bluetooth stacks to use it.
(I'm referring to GlovePIE, if there is a better windows driver 
available, let me know!)

So I was starting to implement something that just gives people access 
to the data from the wii-remote, without using it to emulate other 
devices, by communicating with the Wii remote using pyBluez, only to 
realize that it depends on the Bluez module, which is linux-only. (yeah, 
silly me.)

I was considering using the pySerial module, because I hear you can use 
this to communicate with bluetooth devices as well.
I couldn't get the Wii remote to register a COM port, though, (through 
the windows Bluetooth stack manager thing).  It seems to me that the way 
pySerial would interface with the device is that windows has some 
intermediate layer that pretends to be a serial port but actually 
forwards all communications from this 'virtual' port to the bluetooth 
device.
Does anyone know if this is correct?
Do you have to have the bluetooth device pretending to be a serial 
device in order to use pyserial to communicate with it?

I'd like to be able to write drivers for this, because otherwise I think 
you'll run into a lot of problems when you're trying to port this to 
Windows.
Anyway, thanks for any help anyone can offer in regards to pyserial with 
bluetooth devices.

Perhaps I'll try to write a C-module that can do this and wrap it in 
Python?  I'm not really sure where to go from here.
-Luke