This is (was) my Nintendo Wii
Please click on the green text below for the photos, all open in new window.
Some people say I was mad for taking apart my Nintendo Wii, but I wanted to know 100% how it worked, well the controllers anyway.
So with my Wii just one day old and now voiding my 2 year warranty I set about disassembled it!
First was the main remote (see Wiimote photos above) after removing 4 screws, using a proper prism driver (the screws are called prism screws) and a lot of gentle wiggling the remote sprung open.
After catching all the flying buttons I finally get my first look inside.
There is a CCD (charged coupled device) at the very front of the remote behind the reddish window, this picks up infra red light.
A CCD module basically turns light (in this case infra red light) into electrical signals and are most commonly used in video cameras.
Next time you have your video camera out, set it to record then turn the lights out and point any tv / video remote at it and press the buttons, on playback of the video you will see lots of white flashing dots against a black background, this is the infra red light the CCD has detected.
The infra red is emitted from the Wii bar you stick on top / below your TV this bar had 5 infra red LED's at each end. see photos below.
A small chip in the remote then works out where you are pointing from changes in the electrical signals coming out of the CCD.
Basically it moves the white hand around the Wii screens , if you cover the end of the remote the hand disappears as the CCD is no longer picking up any infra red light.
Motion is detected in the controler using a tiny device
known as MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) commonly
called an accelerometer, these can accurately sense both
rotational orientation and translational acceleration along
three dimensional axes, providing six degrees of freedom.
An Analog Devices ADXL330 accelerometer is embedded in the
main controller and nunchuck.
A chip then takes the outputs form this accelerometer and determine what movement has occurred, then communicates back to the Wii main unit.
The remote communicates with the Wii system using a Broadcom chip / Bluetooth technology.
Inside the main unit there is:
WiFi plug on module
Bluetooth plug on module (Broadcom)
An ATi / NEC / Nintendo graphics CPU (HOLLYWOOD)
IBM CPU (BROADWAY)
