A solar powered wireless Wii sensor bar
The Wii sensor bar, as I'm sure you know is an absolutely essential part of your Wii console and wihout it your Wii remotes just don't work. The combination of the sensor bar and the wiimote makes it possible for the software to determine where you are pointing to on screen. It's not magic and it certainly isn't that complicated.
For those who don't know it the Wii remote and sensor bar kind of work a bit like the remote on your television and the sensor on the television - except in reverse. With the Wii remote / sensor bar combination, the sensor bar is the device that actually has the infrared emitter and it's the remote that actually detects the infrared signal. Another difference is the fact that the sensor bar has two infrared emitters, one at each end. It is these two reference points that make it possible to calculate where the remote is aimed. If you have one of those video cameras with night vision, just turn it on and have a look at your sensor bar and you'll see the emitters glowing.
The sensor bar is tied to the Wii console with a fairly long thin wire and is fine for the average setup where the ii is next to your TV. However, in some cases you might need your sensor bar some distance from the console and you might not want wires trailing across the floor or even around the room. This is exactly the problem that I have as I use a projector rather than a TV (by the way, Wii Bowling is awesome on a big screen!). As it happens I know you can get extension wires and you can even buy a wireless sensor bar, but by all accounts the wireless version of the sensor bar tends to eat up batteries and as far as I know, no one has developed one that you can plug into a base station as you currently can with your Wii remotes (please let me know if you come across one where you can!).
This problem led me to come up with the idea of a solar powered wireless Wii sensor bar. I'm not an expert on electronics but I believe this is one that I could actually do if I had the time. You know those wonderful solar garden lights that everone seems to have these days? If you take one of them apart (and I have) they're not all that complicated. They're basically just a photovoltaic cell, a couple of minature rechargable batteries, an LED and couple of small circuits... the perfect ingredients for our solar powered wireless Wii sensor bar. As I said, I haven't tried it yet but I don't think it would be a stretch to integrate this with a couple of infrared emitters instead of an LED. An off switch would also be a good idea as the sensor bar woudn't need to be on continuous and perhaps more than one solar light would need to be canoblised to get enough photovoltaic cells to charge the batteries.
You would also have to carefully consider where the Wii sensor bar sits. On top of the TV would be best and ideally the TV would be nearer a source of sunlight. Perhaps it might be necessary to put it on the windowsil during the day when you're not using your Wii and then pop it on top of the TV when you want to play games.yff
Anyone up for making a solar powered wireless Wii sensor bar?