Nintendo’s Wii Remote contains some sophisticated hardware. The accelerometers sense motion on several axes, and the infrared camera sensors see IR light and can interface with a PC in complicated ways. Here are two nongame uses for the device.

• PC control: The Wii Remote can be a general PC input device. On your PC, download the free GlovePIE application and install it. Open the bluetooth control panel, click Add, and hold the 1 and 2 buttons on the remote. Follow the on-screen commands to search for a new device. Select the Wii Remote, and don’t use a passkey. Release the 1 and 2 buttons only after completing the connection. In GlovePIE, you use scripts, which translates controller movements into PC commands. Click File-Open, pick a script, and click Run. You can get scripts here. To write a script, select the GUI tab, click Choose manually, and pick a function. Click Direct Input, and press a button on the connected Wii Remote. Or you can click Edit Manually, select Wiimote from Input Device menu, and then choose a function from the ‘Part of device, or a numeric value, or expression’ menu.
• Create a cheap interactive whiteboard: You can make a computer-interactive whiteboard using your PC, a projector, and a homemade light-pen case hacked with an IR LED and a battery. Find out how to here. So you build the pen, turn on Bluetooth (as described earlier), and connect the Wii remote to your PC. Next install the free utility and position the Remote to point at your PC’s display projected on a wall or projector screen. The Remote then follows how you write with the pen on the projection. The pen lets you manipulate the PC interface on the “white-board.”