Looking to stretch their budgets their days, a group of scientists have found a new way to get measurements–hacking their Wiimotes.
Physicist Rolf Hut of Delft University of Technology followed an example put on YouTube by Johnny Chunk Lee to hack a Wiimote and build a wind sesnor.
“It was just a bendy pole with an empty bottle on top with an LED light on the bottle,” Hut tells Wired. “And it swayed in the wind.”
The Wiimote can track just about anything: All that’s needed is an LED light. Hydrologist Willem Luxemburg of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands demonstrated a hacked water-level sensor made from a Wiimote and a plastic boat at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union here Monday.
“Just switch it on and make sure it doesn’t get wet,” Luxemburg said.
Luxemburg’s team aimed the Wiimote at a problem that can be very tricky for hydrologists: measuring evaporation on a body of water. The easiest way to measure evaporation is to place pans of water near the lake, or whatever water is being studied, and put pressure sensors in them. The sensors record the drop in pressure as more and more water disappears. But this equipment can run $500 or more, and still the measurements aren’t accurate because the water in the pan gets warmer on land than it would in the lake. Alternatively, measuring the level of water in a pan that is floating in a lake is also tricky because the pan will inevitably be moving.
And as the news of the new potential uses for the Wiimotes gets out there, both scientists expect to see an increase in the use of the devices as sceintfici instruments.
“I’m pretty sure within the next four to six weeks, some good ideas will come along,” Hut said.
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