Ardour 5.8 on Linux with wii remote

Hello All,

I’ve been trawling the tubes for ways to get a wii remote to work with Ardour 5.8, but all web links seems to be pointing to old, out-of-date ways of doing it. I have tested the basic Bluetooth connection with wmgui and all seems honkydory, which kind of rules out the physical hardware as an issue.

Here is what I have done so far, so please let me know if I have left anything out:

I have also enabled Wiimote in the Edit->Preferences->Control Surfaces->Wiimote menu, but clicking on the “Show Protocol Settings” does nothing. Also pressing the 1+2 buttons together does not seem to do anything (other than making the four Wii remote lights flicker together for a short time).

All suggestions welcome!

Thanks in advance,
Jan Henkins

The wiimote code is not maintained at this time. We would welcome someone who has a Wii to take up maintainance on it; none of the core developers have the device.

The way linux in general deals with the wiimote has changed. Bluetooth drivers in the linux kernel now recognize the wiimote and give it a file handle in /dev/input/ as /dev/input/event* files. The wiimote creates four of them. The only way I have been able to use the Wiimote is to use midikb ( http://www.ovenwerks.net/software/midikb.html ) with this config file: https://github.com/ovenwerks/midikb/blob/master/samples/wiimote.conf

I did not get any of the LEDs working, but all of the buttons did. I am guessing the wiimote code in Ardour needs to be reworked to use the /dev/input interface instead of the old wiimote code. So nothing in Ardour has changed, but nobody uses 2.* kernels any more. It may be possible to disable the standard BT support for the wiimote and install some of the legacy support, but I wouldn’t bank on it.

I am not sure if the wiimote or a phone with touchosc would be easier to use. certainly touchosc gives much better feedback and is able to control a lot more of Ardour’s functions.

Hello Paul and Len,

Thank you very much for the replies!

Len, I will try both your midikb and touchosc suggestions to see which one works best for my purposes.

Regards,
Jan Henkins