How I turned my old Wiimote into a PC mouse (using two candles)
The Nintendo Wii Remote (or Wiimote) is a device that everyone associates with casual gaming and simply shaking the controller. However, it actually hides serious technological advantages that make it perfect for reuse. If you still have that plastic wand stashed away somewhere, you can turn it into a perfectly functional, albeit unconventional, computer mouse.
Keep in mind that you need to approach this ready to tinker and iterate, ready to dive into settings and troubleshoot until the motion control is truly responsive and stable enough for basic pointing and clicking tasks. It’s fun when it’s ready, but it has to be perfect for your specific setup.
What you need
If you want to successfully turn that old plastic wand into a working mouse, you must first obtain the appropriate hardware and software. Just a warning, getting started isn’t exactly plug-and-play. Connecting via Bluetooth is easy, but the real headache is the stock sensor bar; you need to realize that this component is not actually a receiver.
You should realize that the sensor bar is not actually a receiver. This is an infrared transmitter that provides the fixed reference points that the Wiimote’s internal camera needs to determine its position. This original bar features a proprietary red connector designed just for the Wii console, and since it needs constant power to illuminate its infrared arrays, you can’t just plug it into a standard USB port on your PC.
Additionally, you will need a PC capable of handling Bluetooth and a Wiimote. These are perfect for the Dolphin emulator, but you can also use them for your PC. If your computer doesn’t have built-in Bluetooth, you can purchase a USB adapter from Amazon. I use a $7 USB Bluetooth adapter from Ugreen which has worked well.
How to do it
The first hurdle when trying to reuse Nintendo hardware is definitely Bluetooth pairing. This is notoriously tricky on modern Windows systems, as they often require a PIN that the device simply doesn’t have. While the Wii Remote sends a standard Bluetooth signal, the new Windows Settings app generally refuses the connection or doesn’t give you the option to override the PIN.
To get around this mess, avoid the modern menu and instead dive into the old Control Panel and look for the old “Devices and Printers” screen. Select “Add Device” at the top. Grab your controller and press buttons 1 and 2 at the same time, or that little red sync button under the battery cover, to launch discovery mode. The four blue LEDs will flash to indicate that the search is in progress.
As soon as your computer finds the device (mine came out with an input device name), select it immediately. If this old menu asks for a pairing code, you can simply click “Next” or even leave the field completely empty to force the driver installation.
You should place the sensor bar centered directly above or below your monitor. Make sure it’s flush with the edge, so the screen frame doesn’t block infrared lights. Download specialized mapping software, like Touchmote or WiinUPro, so you can translate raw controller input data into actual cursor movements and clicks.
In this program, you will manually map physical buttons to mouse inputs. You’ll want to assign that big A button to the left mouse click for standard use and the B trigger on the back to the right mouse click for context menus.
Simply using raw IR tracking is generally far too fragile for the accuracy a desktop interface needs. To resolve this issue, you need to calibrate the dead zones and adjust the X/Y axis sensitivity. Increasing the smoothing variables helps filter out the slight natural tremors of a human hand, ensuring that the cursor glides smoothly across the desktop instead of shaking erratically.
If you don’t have a Wii sensor
If you don’t have the original sensor bar or just don’t want to deal with all that wiring clutter, it’s no problem. Calling it a “Sensor Bar” is actually wrong, as it is a surprisingly simple device that contains no sensors or receivers itself. It does not send any content or data to your computer; it only acts as two fixed reference points using infrared light.
The real intelligence is housed inside the Wii Remote, which includes a high-resolution infrared camera capable of tracking these two light sources to determine its position and triangulate where it’s pointing. Since the hardware is essentially just two lights, you can bypass the original console equipment entirely and swap it out with almost any infrared lighting source.
For quick tests or temporary calibration, you can trick the Wii Remote into seeing a sensor bar by placing two lit tea lights about 8 to 10 inches apart. Since the fire emits infrared light, the remote detects the two flames as the necessary tracking points, allowing you to move the cursor as you would on the console.
While this solution is incredibly cheap, it is unstable because flickering flames can cause the slider to shake, and placing an open fire near a monitor is a real safety risk. If you want a safer permanent setup, you can purchase a wireless or USB sensor bar online. You can buy one on Amazon for a cheap $10.
This means that a nearby Wii console isn’t necessary simply to provide reference points. If you’d rather avoid the extra hardware altogether, you can also try using a script that relies solely on the Wii Motion Plus gyroscope for mouse movement.
Software like GlovePIE can translate pitch and yaw data from Motion Plus sensors into mouse cursor movements, allowing you to control the computer without pointing at the screen at all. This gyroscopic mouse setup is perfect for presentations or situations where sunlight can disrupt infrared signals. However, this method does not have the absolute accuracy of IR tracking and you will often need to refocus it due to natural drift.
Turning an old gaming peripheral, like the Nintendo Wii Remote, into a real computer mouse doesn’t take much work when you have the equipment. It also proves that nothing is truly obsolete and that even discontinued products can have a productive second life.
The resulting weird mouse might not replace your fast, modern version, but it’s certainly a win for a DIY project. It’s a good idea to take your old devices and see if they can find new life on other platforms. You never know if these are elements of a project that you might not know existed.
