It never crossed my mind that the 'sensor bar' could be the emittor while the wii remotes detect IR light. I always assumed it was the opposite way around
You can actually even test it out. If you have a Wii sensor bar, just plug it in, turn the Wii on, and point your phone camera towards the sensor bar. Should look like about 10 lights, 5 on either side. Doesn't work on all phones, only ones that don't have an IR filter. I can see it on my Pixel 6
I actually beat Twilight Princess the first time by candlelight using this method. My sensor bar was defective so Nintedo sent me a new one, but I was too impatient to wait for it. Having the candles there honestly added to the atmosphere of the game, made it feel just a little more magical.
When I first learned about this is blew my mind. That explained the weird calibration screen to a tee, it was literally the display from the camera. That also explains how those damn wireless sensor bars work, was like magic to me
This was a very big problem for anyone who setup the Wii in a place where they had direct sunlight. It took me days before I realized that the controller only broke at 3 PM when I didn't have the blinds closed.
This was actually found out almost immediately after the Wii was released. It was a huge deal in the computer, gaming, and tech magazines and people were astounded back then
Was about to leave a comment but you said it better than I could. Remember the 3d glasses tech demo for the wii? Around the same time some guy put the IR lights in the frame of a pair of glasses and placed the wii remote in front of the tv. it would track the guys head giving the illusion of 3d, now that’s something that should come back.
My brother and I used to do this 10+ years ago when our sensor bar broke. The fact that this is only now becoming widespread is super unexpected to me. I thought it was generally known lol
It's still a great solution to an early and new problem, not only does it fix the issue of position relative to the tv, it also deals with distance and rotation of the Wii remote, paired with some smart software design. I have no doubt that a lot of headtracker modules nowadays took inspiration from the wii, we're also seeing similar more advanced returns of this tech in standalone VR sets.
I remember the guy at Game Crazy telling me about this as a kid when I went in for a new sensor bar and they were out of stock. I used candles for over a month before getting a new bar xD
Huh…never thought my 8th grade science would actually be useful, thank you to my teacher for burning that into my brain I actually know how that works.
I never knew that the sensor bar transmits to the remote rather than the other way around. I assume it uses Bluetooth or similar to communicate with the wii.
It does use Bluetooth community with the wii. The sensor bar is really only there for controlling the hand cursor. I, however, just use my classic controller pro.
The wii remotes themselves actually are Bluetooth. (You can connect them to anything that has bluetooth, which is very convenient for Emulation) What's going on here is that the sensor bar doesn't send any data. It is literally just a bunch of tiny lights powered by the Wii. The wiimote does all of the heavy lifting. It keeps track of the lights' position to move the cursor. The wiimote is what tells that to the Wii, not the other way around. The sensor bar is the output, and the wiimote is the input. It's also part of why, when emulating Wii games, I used to set my real Wii up and turn it on and everything, just not plug it into a TV. Then I'd put the sensor bar in front of my computer and bam! Works just fine. Recently I modded my Wii so I don't have to do this anymore, but it was still neat :)
@@CanonOverseer sure, but inside out tracking is based on the same technology as light house tracking. Just from within the headset itself so in a way..
I actually had to do this for the longest time cause I couldn't find the sensor bar needed (or it broke) it's pretty cool, all you really have to do is light the candles and then it works perfectly fine, good way to save money in you've lost the sensor
@@gilbertlopez I don't actually recall if they were, and the reason we never got a new one was cause we did end up finding the one we had, my father just had to fix it
A few years ago I was hanging out with friends and we found an old Wii. We didn’t have a sensor bar but we really wanted to play Mario Kart. So one of us stood in front of the TV and held two lighters so we could select the game. Good times.
No but u can use the joystick on the classic controller but if ur playing a game that only uses the wii remote and u hit the home button to reset or got to the wii menu then it work even if u plug it in right then. It will work if the game is already using the classic controller
This trick works well with big bulb christmas lights strung around a room. You can lay back and point upward anywhere in the room and the space between them gives you plenty of room to move the finger before going to the next bulb to reposition the pointer.
They dont have to be old but I think they are called C2 bulbs. I had 2 strands ran around my room a long time ago and you can get them easy during holiday season.
Ahhhh love that it's taken so many years for this little trick to make it into the mainstream I remember using this back in the day to start up brawl or GameCube games
Sometimes the internet is disappointing but sometimes it's just the greatest when people can share tips like this. I never would have thought to use candles
I learned about that when we got ours and was able to emulate the Wii sensor bar with 2 Christmas lamps colored with black sharpie each powered with a AA battery.
The bar plugs in because it’s the thing emitting the infrared light, it needs that power. The controller reads the light to figure out where to go, rather than the bar reading the remote.
damn, that actually makes so much sense to have the remote as the receiver too, you could calculate distance based on the gap between the lights, and from there adjust the remote movement to screen movement ratio so it remains 1:1 no matter how far away you are. also, it's easier to collect the light over a larger area than point the light at something. ooh, and you can rotate the remote
Back in the day at Melee tournaments we'd use lighters to navigate to the game channel on Wii setups. Thankfully now every Wii is modded so you can just boot to homebrew and use the gamecube controller
i did this while emulating mario galaxy on my pc, balanced the candles on my monitor looking back on it i was pretty damn lucky the only thing that went wrong after a week of playing was a minor mess of wax
As a kid when my sensor bar broke we went to a game store this was around 2012 and the guys at the counter told us about the candle trick and how it works those guys are the best in the world
Oooh i always thought that this was cap for the longest. I thought the sensor needed to be present to transmit the location of the remote to the wii. Its so interesting knowing the wii remote transmits its location data wirelessly with the bar repressing the screen!
90% of the pointer is simply being calcuted by the rotation of the remote, while 10% are just some stabilization lights (there are some games where you actually need to point your remote away from the tv, so that's the reason why it still works)
@@TheDsRequiem I play it every week as a nice change from console for a day I normally do console Tuesday to Sunday and wii on Mondays I have so many games in the wii that I can play a different game every week. Not always fun but still most of the time it is.
you can also point it directly into the flash on your phone. very convenient when u happen to lose ur sensor bar and you need to get past the main menu to play a GameCube game
Opportunity missed. There was a period where I was doing this alot when the sensor broke lol. Didn't know how or why it worked but I was happy to find a replacement
Learned about this years ago at a Melee tournament. Didnt even use candles. Just use a lighter, hold it at the end, and have the wii mote point through the lighter at the screen. Works like a charm lol
My mom used to take the sensor bar from our wii to keep us from playing it, but as a child I figured out this trick and used a lighter to load into whatever GameCube game I was gonna play
dude i remember doing this as a kid! my cat chewed the motion sensor cable so i asked my mom to borrow some candles for the wii. needless to say she was confused but it totally works! i learned though that the flame has to be visible aka no foggy glass on the candle
I used to mess with them, and found that it does this using multiple different sources. This caused me to bust out the Wii again and mess with light sources on the wiimotes
When the wii came out we broke the sensor bar within a couple days (it was either stepped on or beer spilled on it or both at a party) So one of the guys there was like “oh just use two lighters!” So we’d use two bic lighters to get Smash Brothers going, once you were in the game you didn’t need the sensor anymore. Mind was blown.
I must be old because back when I had a Wii this was common knowledge and everyone did this if they lost the sensor bar lol. Now it’s a crazy trend - hilarious
Today I found out that the remote is the receiver. Mind blown. Candles who cares.
Why is it called a sensor bar if it transmits?
Agreed.
@@oko3717 it doesn't transmit. It's just two lights, and the Wii remote sensor sees where they are.
@@iKingRPG look up the definition of “to transmit” mate🤣
@@calvin2013 yes technically it does transmit, but what I'm saying is it doesn't transmit data. The remote does that via Bluetooth.
It never crossed my mind that the 'sensor bar' could be the emittor while the wii remotes detect IR light. I always assumed it was the opposite way around
Same
Yeah wtf
You can actually even test it out. If you have a Wii sensor bar, just plug it in, turn the Wii on, and point your phone camera towards the sensor bar. Should look like about 10 lights, 5 on either side.
Doesn't work on all phones, only ones that don't have an IR filter. I can see it on my Pixel 6
VR base stations / lighthouses are also just spinning lights that do not see or detect anything
Exactly!
This would explain why I couldn't play my Wii when my house was on fire
Wait a minute-
*could
I’m no expert but i think something else was stopping you from playing the wii
Yeah the fire creates a lot of infrared light, too much for the wii remote to focus on the screen but you can still play gamecube games on it
You can?
That console was so awesome for its time. It was so incredibly innovative.
So what do you think of duck hunt on a much older console?
Was?
Basically the predecessor to VR hand controllers.
@@BN99239 shit. Barely works nowadays.
@@Cookie.2118 Yeah, it works better on CRT TV's. It was freaking witchcraft for its time though!
"Ayo wanna play some boxing"
"Yeah bro lemme light my candles rq"
I foresee no negative consequences
[Candles blow out due to ebic duel]
😭😭😭😭😭
😏😏😏
Bow chicka wow wow
That explains why the wireless sensor literally doesn’t require any setting up, you just turn it on and it works.
Lets see how many subs I can give out to people from this comment :))
Like your mom.
@@The_Blue_Ender bro i got hacked
@@dullss sure
@@snoppy216 nah, can confirm, i hacked him.
I actually beat Twilight Princess the first time by candlelight using this method. My sensor bar was defective so Nintedo sent me a new one, but I was too impatient to wait for it. Having the candles there honestly added to the atmosphere of the game, made it feel just a little more magical.
Bro that was THE game. Beat it completely like 3 times bc it was so good
That's pog. Super aesthetic
Pfft. Twilight Princess by candle light?
Try playing A Link to the Past by moonlight. Kids these days just don't realize how easy they have it.
@@zera2314 used to play a link to the past on my GBA in the car at night waiting for another street light to pass by
Oh my goodness that sounds amazing
When I first learned about this is blew my mind. That explained the weird calibration screen to a tee, it was literally the display from the camera. That also explains how those damn wireless sensor bars work, was like magic to me
Bk
This was a very big problem for anyone who setup the Wii in a place where they had direct sunlight. It took me days before I realized that the controller only broke at 3 PM when I didn't have the blinds closed.
Lmao I had this same exact experience, Nintendo shoulda informed people about this since its such a simple way to break the pointer.
That's hilarious
@@rishkebab5092 the user manual tells you that:
"Avoid bright light sources, including sunlight, behind or near the TV"
Omfg. You just brought my childhood full circle. Me shaking my arm violently and screaming at the tv
Your a true donny you have just solved a life long dilemma I hearby declare you as a donny, 🙏 thank you
This was actually found out almost immediately after the Wii was released. It was a huge deal in the computer, gaming, and tech magazines and people were astounded back then
Was about to leave a comment but you said it better than I could. Remember the 3d glasses tech demo for the wii? Around the same time some guy put the IR lights in the frame of a pair of glasses and placed the wii remote in front of the tv. it would track the guys head giving the illusion of 3d, now that’s something that should come back.
I remember messing with my lighter one time and I noticed the remote was tryna pick up the signal. I was amazed haha
My brother and I used to do this 10+ years ago when our sensor bar broke. The fact that this is only now becoming widespread is super unexpected to me. I thought it was generally known lol
It's still a great solution to an early and new problem, not only does it fix the issue of position relative to the tv, it also deals with distance and rotation of the Wii remote, paired with some smart software design. I have no doubt that a lot of headtracker modules nowadays took inspiration from the wii, we're also seeing similar more advanced returns of this tech in standalone VR sets.
@@aBlackMage it is for people who had them at the time
I remember the guy at Game Crazy telling me about this as a kid when I went in for a new sensor bar and they were out of stock. I used candles for over a month before getting a new bar xD
Huh…never thought my 8th grade science would actually be useful, thank you to my teacher for burning that into my brain I actually know how that works.
I never knew that the sensor bar transmits to the remote rather than the other way around. I assume it uses Bluetooth or similar to communicate with the wii.
It does use Bluetooth community with the wii. The sensor bar is really only there for controlling the hand cursor. I, however, just use my classic controller pro.
Yeah I never would have thought. Realized that when I tried doing some wii emulation with my laptop.
The wii remotes themselves actually are Bluetooth. (You can connect them to anything that has bluetooth, which is very convenient for Emulation)
What's going on here is that the sensor bar doesn't send any data. It is literally just a bunch of tiny lights powered by the Wii. The wiimote does all of the heavy lifting. It keeps track of the lights' position to move the cursor. The wiimote is what tells that to the Wii, not the other way around. The sensor bar is the output, and the wiimote is the input.
It's also part of why, when emulating Wii games, I used to set my real Wii up and turn it on and everything, just not plug it into a TV. Then I'd put the sensor bar in front of my computer and bam! Works just fine.
Recently I modded my Wii so I don't have to do this anymore, but it was still neat :)
I guess it's to save battery life?
this is fake lmao
That loop had me thinking I was in a time warp continuum
It’s amazing that this is the technology that eventually lead to inside out tracking on Vr headsets
I mean the more direct descendant is the valve/vive lighthouse stuff
infrared lasers and the controllers themselves being the recievers
@@CanonOverseer sure, but inside out tracking is based on the same technology as light house tracking. Just from within the headset itself so in a way..
this made sense after exactly 2 minutes and 43 seconds of thinking
I actually had to do this for the longest time cause I couldn't find the sensor bar needed (or it broke) it's pretty cool, all you really have to do is light the candles and then it works perfectly fine, good way to save money in you've lost the sensor
is the sensor bar expensive. i mean eventually you'll run out of candle right?
@@gilbertlopez well they are expensive and yes you run out of candies you can just buy more
@@Seroperato they’re no longer expensive, I’ve personally seen them going for a little as £6
@@gilbertlopez I don't actually recall if they were, and the reason we never got a new one was cause we did end up finding the one we had, my father just had to fix it
Damn, that's kind of exactly what the guy in the video said word for word
A few years ago I was hanging out with friends and we found an old Wii. We didn’t have a sensor bar but we really wanted to play Mario Kart. So one of us stood in front of the TV and held two lighters so we could select the game. Good times.
No but u can use the joystick on the classic controller but if ur playing a game that only uses the wii remote and u hit the home button to reset or got to the wii menu then it work even if u plug it in right then. It will work if the game is already using the classic controller
@Joaquin not from Wii Menu
How did the lighters not melt
@@FAITHFULQRX think about that question for a few seconds and then you get back to me with an answer
This trick works well with big bulb christmas lights strung around a room. You can lay back and point upward anywhere in the room and the space between them gives you plenty of room to move the finger before going to the next bulb to reposition the pointer.
Theyd have to be those old huge ass bulbs to be that far apart no?
They dont have to be old but I think they are called C2 bulbs. I had 2 strands ran around my room a long time ago and you can get them easy during holiday season.
C7 or C9 should do it. Had my number wrong lol.
So what you’re saying is
On Tatooine you could play wherever you are, right?
Yes, but only at the correct time of day 😉
The exact opposite actually
Ahhhh love that it's taken so many years for this little trick to make it into the mainstream I remember using this back in the day to start up brawl or GameCube games
Sometimes the internet is disappointing but sometimes it's just the greatest when people can share tips like this. I never would have thought to use candles
Wait so what problem do the candles solve?
@@alexoxo1 if the wii sensor bar is broken. Watch the vid.
I learned about that when we got ours and was able to emulate the Wii sensor bar with 2 Christmas lamps colored with black sharpie each powered with a AA battery.
I broke my sensor bar yesterday so this is actually very helpful 👍🏽
I found this out by accident when I was a kid and told all my friends who never believed me. They where in shock when I showed them
One thing that always confused me tho was how this worked without the candles being “plugged in” to the Wii
The wii remotes trasmitthhed data to the wii. The bar (candles) just let the wii remote reference where their pointed
Because the remote does the work, not the other way around lol
Gotta get Bluetooth candles.
The bar plugs in because it’s the thing emitting the infrared light, it needs that power. The controller reads the light to figure out where to go, rather than the bar reading the remote.
damn, that actually makes so much sense to have the remote as the receiver too, you could calculate distance based on the gap between the lights, and from there adjust the remote movement to screen movement ratio so it remains 1:1 no matter how far away you are. also, it's easier to collect the light over a larger area than point the light at something. ooh, and you can rotate the remote
Also, if it was the other way around it wouldn't be able to handle multiple controllers.
Back in the day at Melee tournaments we'd use lighters to navigate to the game channel on Wii setups. Thankfully now every Wii is modded so you can just boot to homebrew and use the gamecube controller
Great now I can fight Matt and have one hell of a boss fight experience
In SUPER rough situations, like just to start Brawl, I've actually used the Sun before lol.
i did this while emulating mario galaxy on my pc, balanced the candles on my monitor
looking back on it i was pretty damn lucky the only thing that went wrong after a week of playing was a minor mess of wax
Did you put the candles on tiny plates to catch the wax?
☠️☠️ could have burned down your house just to play games
@@dariendude17 i shouldve
This is cool but you're gonna be burning through a candle every time you wanna play for more than an hour
As a kid when my sensor bar broke we went to a game store this was around 2012 and the guys at the counter told us about the candle trick and how it works those guys are the best in the world
Oooh i always thought that this was cap for the longest. I thought the sensor needed to be present to transmit the location of the remote to the wii. Its so interesting knowing the wii remote transmits its location data wirelessly with the bar repressing the screen!
Good to know when the remote don’t work
i did this a few years ago with candles at a get together, I remember someone explaining this to me and then i made it work irl
i miss my wii so much, this brought back so many simple yet pleasant memories.
90% of the pointer is simply being calcuted by the rotation of the remote, while 10% are just some stabilization lights (there are some games where you actually need to point your remote away from the tv, so that's the reason why it still works)
@@cxx23 for those games, you would technically need no sensor (or candles) at all
I remember when my dad showed me this year's ago, I was so confused like what sorcery is this
That's fantastic, thank you for sharing this!
High key wario smooth moves is one of the best games made for the Wii, so so so much fun to play
I always wondered how the people in the 1800's played on the Wii... Interesting!
"You may have seen this viral trend going around-"
Is it really viral if no one's talking about it?
Lots of people were talking about it... like 16 years ago lmao
I've had a wii since 3 weeks after it came out i use it every week still works perfectly fine. Yet I still never knew this.
Theres no way you've been playing wii games and enjoying them since the console came out
@@TheDsRequiem I play it every week as a nice change from console for a day I normally do console Tuesday to Sunday and wii on Mondays I have so many games in the wii that I can play a different game every week. Not always fun but still most of the time it is.
I remember seeing videos about this back when the Wii came out. Feels wild to see this come back up.
Smooth moves? Best, most complex, most difficult extreme game out there. Only real game guys/girl/ pals know this.
„Viral Trend“ this was all over the internet when the wii first released. …im getting old
Ah so that’s how they played Wii games in the 17th century, good to know
ive known this for years and is my go to party trick to impress my friends
"Mom, can we have a wii ?"
"No, we already have a wii at home."
The wii :
Summoning the Wii demons from your TV lmao
the most amazing thing to me is that people are still playing wii
I always thought it worked the other way around, with the controller transmitting IR and the bar receiving. This is pretty cool
These shorts always make day
Whenever the sensor bar doesn't want to work right, my dad always just put candles next to it. I thought it was so magical lol
Wow That’s actually pretty cool
you can also point it directly into the flash on your phone. very convenient when u happen to lose ur sensor bar and you need to get past the main menu to play a GameCube game
BRO I DID THIS AND IT WORKED THANK YOU
WARIO SMOOTH MOVES IS SO GOOD
I remember doing this as a kid with my dad
*"So it's Dark Magic..."*
It’s so funny to me bc every time you play the wii it’s like you’re doing a seance to summon the video game gods
That's crazy 🤣 wish I knew this as a kid when my sensor broke
Opportunity missed. There was a period where I was doing this alot when the sensor broke lol. Didn't know how or why it worked but I was happy to find a replacement
The amount of coimidinced required for this is amazing
Honestly quite intriguing.
This is what my great grand father used as a sensor bar for their wii back in the days when there was still no electricity
Learned about this years ago at a Melee tournament. Didnt even use candles. Just use a lighter, hold it at the end, and have the wii mote point through the lighter at the screen. Works like a charm lol
I did this when I was a kid when our wii sensor broke, it worked surprisingly well
My grandparents wii remotes are connected to the lights in their house lol
The technology of the wiimote was ahead of its time. It will be used in presentations and more in the future. Mark my words!
Taking speed running to a whole new level
My mom used to take the sensor bar from our wii to keep us from playing it, but as a child I figured out this trick and used a lighter to load into whatever GameCube game I was gonna play
dude i remember doing this as a kid! my cat chewed the motion sensor cable so i asked my mom to borrow some candles for the wii. needless to say she was confused but it totally works! i learned though that the flame has to be visible aka no foggy glass on the candle
Nostalgia trip from old UA-cam.
My brother and I growing up used candles for a sensor bar for a bit because our mom vacuumed up the wire to our original sensor bar lol
I already learned this some time on but you explained it very nicely anyways
Yes, it does work… if you connect the candles to the wii. Very helpful thx 👍
bruh what
@@maxkimmings4361 I’m being sarcastic lol
I didn't know about this til now! Although you'd probably be wasting a lot of candles 😅
I love your videos keep going
This leads me to speculate that this technology might be older than i previously assumed.
The Power of the Sun
In the Palm of My Hand.
It's wild this is making the rounds again 15 years later
I did this back in the day when I’d dust off the Wii to play some games but couldn’t find the censor bar
So that's why it works when I point out to the suns reflection of my neighbors window.
My industrial technology teacher from middle school back in 2007 made his own Smartboard with parts from a Wii.
I remember using this tip when my censor bar broke. Pretty dang effective. I used tea light candles
I remember I used to play my wii like this for a week while I waited for my sensor bar to arrive
I used to mess with them, and found that it does this using multiple different sources. This caused me to bust out the Wii again and mess with light sources on the wiimotes
Dang even though I know like nothing about the wii this is really interesting
I literally did this when my sensor bar broke. Works pretty well.
When the wii came out we broke the sensor bar within a couple days (it was either stepped on or beer spilled on it or both at a party)
So one of the guys there was like “oh just use two lighters!”
So we’d use two bic lighters to get Smash Brothers going, once you were in the game you didn’t need the sensor anymore. Mind was blown.
Was very helpful wanting to play "Totally legit and legally obtained" wii games on my PC and didn't have a bar for a bit
If only I still had my wii to try this out on.
I must be old because back when I had a Wii this was common knowledge and everyone did this if they lost the sensor bar lol. Now it’s a crazy trend - hilarious
I took apart my sensor bar and wiimote recently and the sensor bar has those sensors in it it's cool to see them in person and yes the still work
That tech is surprisingly close to the NES's gun, considering it is way older
Same concept as the old NES light gun, cool!
I used that wii hax many years ago when we forgot the censor bar lol. Good times
everyone gangsta until the candle runs out
It’s honestly how I use my Wii to this day
I remember when my Wii in 2005 was the only way to get Netflix with a special CD. Otherwise it only came in the mail
Honestly this would probably work better than my sensor bar