Wireless Sensors Track Movement for Total VR Immersion

Jean Perardel, apparently not content for the next generation of VR to come to him, decided to take things into his own hands and built a unique “Be Your Hero” interface system using Arduino and Raspberry Pi. The system uses nodes that feature an MPU-6050 6DOF accelerometer, Wii Remote Camera and Wii Nunchuk, whose outputs are sensed by an Arduino Fio. The Fio sends these commands on to a central Arduino Micro via Bluetooth, using an nRF24L01+ module.

The Micro then uses its built-in HID capabilities to send these combined commands to a Raspberry Pi running a virtual reality environment, which analyzes the incoming data and outputs the interface over HDMI. It’s noted that while the Pi was selected because of its ubiquity in the maker world, any Linux computer, or even one set up to run Python, should have no problem running the system.

Output comes in the form of a full-screen view for play on a TV, or more excitingly, VR images for use with a headset. This gives you total control of the on-screen or on-headset character, models of which are sourced from freely available Blender models.

While this entire setup is made with readily accessible parts, since the Micro is just emulating a normal HID, the system can also be controlled with a keyboard and mouse if needed. If you’d like to experiment with the system yourself, you can find Be Your Hero code on GitHub.

[h/t: Raspberry Pi Pod]