The Wiinstrument

World's first desktop application that accurately simulates a drum set by swinging a set of Nintendo Wii controllers in the air.

A Nintendo Wiimote controller used as air drumsticks. The screenshot shows an assignment of buttons to MIDI notes.

The Wiinstrument is world's first desktop application that accurately simulates a drum set with Nintendo Wii controllers. Just swing your wiimote around, and/or impress somebody by underscoring your genuinely witty remarks with a rimshot.

The software is just a quick hack, but it was mentioned in Make magazine, German de:bug magazine and on createdigitalmusic.com. The computer music print magazine in UK even shipped it on CD, in a special edition called ‘The best free plugins ever!’

I designed and implemented the main application and its OpenGL-based graphical user interface on MacOS X. Tobias Moebert later ported the application to Windows and Linux. We published it in 2008.

Tech: C++ (Xcode, Visual C++, KDevelop), OpenGL, Bluetooth, MIDI, boost library, Gosu library