Wiimote Scouting system Info from Nventivity

[falconmaster]

The following are emails from people that are interested and beta testing the system. It will be released tomorrow! Sorry its Inventivity not Nventivity

Hi, Mr. Reid.

Thanks for expressing an interest in our wiimote scouting system. We have just received feedback from two other beta test teams and are incorporating a few improvements into the software. We will make it available for public release tomorrow. Additional updates may be available before the Championship event in Atlanta, but we want to have the software available for other teams to test during weeks 5 and 6.

If you haven't found it already, you can view the Data entry instructions link at the top of the Scout webpage. This document summarizes wiimote button assignments. In the meantime, I would recommend that you have your lead scout learn your Bluetooth device manager inside and out. Practice connecting all 6 wiimotes simultaneously. This has been the biggest obstacle for beta test teams 180, 842, and 2377. Here are our collective notes on this issue:


BLUETOOTH CONNECTIVITY:

Comments from Team 842:

The biggest issue that we've really had to get the hang of is Bluetooth connectivity.

All six Wiimotes need to be communicating with the laptop prior to running the program. I tried a variety of Bluetooth Service Managers and found that BlueSoleil was the only one capable of maintaining the connection with the first four Wiimotes as I tried to connect the last two. A higher level of patience and persistence are especially necessary for Wiimote #6, but eventually, it, too, will connect. You also have to be careful with the way BlueSoleil populates the Device Manager (at least in Win XP -- we haven't tested this limitation with Vista yet). We made the mistake of connecting a seventh Wiimote and couldn't get rid of it in by uninstalling it in the Device Manager or by removing it from the registry (a dangerous place to be). Ultimately, we had to uninstall BlueSoleil and reinstall it to correct the problem.

You will want to label each of the six Wiimotes with its device address so that you can connect them in an orderly fashion from the BlueSoleil device history list -- we know that the regional event will be filled with Bluetooth devices, so we only want to search for services on these six devices, not all available devices. Also, we're using a Class 2 Bluetooth dongle, so we have to keep the Wiimotes within 10m of the laptop. If you have a Class 1 Bluetooth device, your Wiimotes will be able to get much further away before their signals drop out and cause a disruption in the software. NOTE: Our concern here is that one of the students will run off with a Wiimote and bring all data collection to a grinding halt as we have to stop the software to reconnect the device.


With MS's Bluetooth Service software, I couldn't get past wiimote #4 without the first ones timing out. The BlueSoleil software is great for keeping the connections alive, but it is terrible for getting rid of extraneous HID devices. If you feel as though you have a good understanding of how to get your devices connected, that is good. I would make sure that you are also prepared for being in a Bluetooth-heavy environment -- that is, if you can selectively search for just those device addresses specific to your wiimotes, that would be best. Otherwise, you may find yourself button-mashing for much longer than seems reasonable.



Comments from Team 2377:


Our team laptops are not Bluetooth enabled, so I purchased two different Bluetooth USB dongles. One came from Best Buy (Rocketfish) and the other from Office Depot (Targus). Both dongles came with WIDCOMM 5.5. I soon found out that WIDCOMM 5.5 is not compatible with the Wiimotes as this version of the software requires a Passkey for each device. The Wiimotes do not require the use of a Passkey. I used the testing tool available on the BlueSoleil website. This tool alerted me that the dongles I purchased were not compatible with the BlueSoleil software. I turned to Google. We are running WIDCOMM version 4.4 with a patch for two of the DLL's and two of the exe files using the Rocketfish dongle. I used the following resources to implement this setup:

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/wladykad/

I also found this site to be very helpful - http://www.wiili.org/index.php/Compa...etooth_Devices

After getting the first Wiimote to connect, it was very easy to get all six connected. The only strange behavior we see at this point is when a Wiimote drops into an idle state while getting all of the devices connected. This is easily mitigated by continual button mashing. Once the program starts, this is not an issue.



Comments from Team 180:



Here at Team SPAM, we were able to load up all of the software but we are still having issues with connecting all 6 WiiMotes. We can get 5 of them connected and the laptop can see the 6th one, but it just won't connect. I suspect something in Windows XP.



I am using the FTC Bluetooth dongle (ABE US22B) with the MS Bluetooth drivers installed in XP SP3. I also have a USB mouse attached to my laptop.

I've sent a note to Micrsoft to see if they have any idea why this doesn't work for me.







Beyond this, here are Team 842's findings from this weekend:

Team 842 findings at the AZ Regional

Wiimote data entry software

Platform: Win 32-bit Vista SP1, BlueSoleil, Class 2 dongle

1) Vista locked up once during match 4. The computer had to be restarted and taken through full system recovery to restart. Wiimote scouting program was back online for match 6. NOTE: Our robot was competing in match 4 when the lockup occurred. We suspect that the dongle was jarred during the excitement.

2) The Wiimote data entry program (not Vista) locked up during match 57. The person sitting in front of the computer had stretched her arms back and hit the dongle. Full system reboot was not required. Wiimotes were reconnected and only match 57 data was lost.


Wiimote data analysis software

Platform: Win XP SP3

1) Error found in Timelines pie charting code. Pie charts do not accurately represent timeline data.



Revisions included in the next release:

Wiimote data entry software

1) Penalty data will be added to End Game screen.



Wiimote data analysis software

1) Source of pie charting error found and fixed.

2) Number of data points and standard deviation now included in the Rankings data table.

3) Rankings data screen now includes a checkbox for including or omitting the End Trailer point deduction from the points per game (PPG) calculation.

4) Simulated match data on the Rankings data screen now includes +/- 3s.

5) Penalty data will be added to the raw data table.




I will let you know when the next rev of the software becomes available for download. It should be ready by tomorrow afternoon. We appreciate your willingness to try it out and look forward to hearing any feedback you care to offer.

[PICgnosis]

The wiimote scouting software is now available for download at www.nventivity.com/scout2.htm.

You can learn more about it here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...972#post840972