Air drumming with the Wii remote

by Kyle Orland { Dec 7th 2006 at 10:30AM }

Based solely on internet videos, you might think Wii owners were more interested in hacking their remote for PC use than actually using it to play Wii games. First the guys at WiiLi.org demonstrated the remote's use as a PC mouse. Then someone rigged up the remote to play a half-assed game of Half-Life 2. And now we get video of a totally awesome air drumming simulator using the remote.

The drumming setup uses a program to convert Wii remote motions into keyboard presses, which are then converted into drum sounds by a separate program. We're impressed by how intuitive and responsive the setup seems to be, even though we think the whole thing would get old after about five minutes. What this needs is some sort of structure -- a set of rules and goals to guide the user's experience and make it more fun. Almost like a drum machine game. Are you listening, Nintendo/hacking community?

[Thanks Brian, Via digg]

Tags: computer, drum, hack, PC, remote, wii

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

LunarDuality @ Dec 7th 2006 10:37AM

Drum Hero anyone? (And this is all because of that damn Wii promo video with the guy drumming with two remotes.

LuigiHann @ Dec 7th 2006 10:37AM

One of the minigames/tech demos shown off at E3 was a drumming game of sorts... it'll probably be a part of Wii Music, along with that condutor game.

AJay17 @ Dec 7th 2006 10:37AM

Sweet. I'd like to try this out.

-AJay
http://www.ajay17.com

Franky Digital @ Dec 7th 2006 11:02AM

I'm fairly sure they (Nintendo Japan) said Wii incarnations of the Taiko Drum Master and Beatmania series' were coming.

crono141 @ Dec 7th 2006 11:08AM

What really suprises me is how fast people have reverse engineered the wiimote. I mean, I don't think Nintendo tried hard (or at all) to keep people from doing it, but in the course of 2 weeks we've already got viable use of Wiimote on our PC's, and in another week or 2 they'll probably have the whole thing figured out.

How long before someone writes a driver for windows for it, so GlovePIE isn't even needed anymore? A month? Less?

This is phenominal!

Matt @ Dec 7th 2006 11:08AM

Finally, my "In The Air Tonight Drum Solo"ing skills will pay off! muahahaha

FernandoRocker @ Dec 7th 2006 11:10AM

We want Wiitar Hero!

Finn @ Dec 7th 2006 11:20AM

must do this with 2 wiimotes

Silver @ Dec 7th 2006 11:39AM

Needs nunchuck integration! That dude from Def Leppard may be able to drum with one hand, but I certainly can't.

just_somebody @ Dec 7th 2006 12:34PM

@Silver

love it! and Def Leppard reference scores points in my boook

Shiv @ Dec 7th 2006 12:41PM

If they could combine this with one of my favourite games at the moment for PS2, DrumMania - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DrumMania - then I'd be set.

Also worth noting is that along with DrumMania, the PS game discs have a game called Guitar Freaks which pre-dates Guitar Hero by quite a margin. I seem to remember that some people were getting into hot legal water for selling guitar hero controllers... surely harmonix (or whoever) should be getting rapped on the knuckles for stealing a controller idea AND a whole game?

Daniel @ Dec 7th 2006 1:05PM

Rythm Tengoku had a pretty nice drumming minigame in wich you just had to follow the beats. It had many levels and as you progressed the beats would get harder. It was a fun minigame in my opinion, but I didn't like having to press the buttons to play the drums.
A Rythm Tengoku game for Wii would be so awesome...