Keynote with a Wii Remote

Here’s a short tutorial on how to use a Nintendo Wii Remote to control Apple’s Keynote presentation tool using OSCulator, a great little tool to connect (un)usual controllers to software.

We had our first experience with using a Wii Remote during a presentation we gave at the Typo Design Conference 2007 in Berlin. At that time OSCulator, the software we were using to pipe the controller data coming from the Wii Remote buttons and sensors to the software, was quite buggy for that purpose and using it on stage was a bit adventurous.

In the meantime, we were using the Wii Remote rather for some experiments with music software. But last Thursday, I decided to use it once again – this time with Apple’s Keynote, our current tool of choice for presentations. I downloaded the latest version of OSCulator and quickly set up a pretty basic configuration for controlling the Keynote presentation with the Wii Remote.

There also is a tool that is specifically made for that purpose – called Wiinote, but I think it’s a bit too limited, since it only lets you activate Keynote or go to the next and previous slide. With OSCulator, you can freely assign each button or sensor to whatever shortcut’s available within Keynote (find a full list in Keynote’s “Help” menu). Just pair your Wii Remote with OSCulator (here’s a comprehensive documentation) and start assigning with an interface that looks like this:

So basically, in the “Event Type” column choose “Keycode” and as the value choose whatever Keynote shortcut you’d like to use. I use “left” and “right” for moving back and forth, “up” and “down” for going to the first and last slide. But what I mainly like is having set button “A” to go back to the latest slide and “B” to immediately pause the presentation (also works with embedded videos). Another handy trick: assign button “1″ to the number on which you have an overview of your presentation and button “2″ to “enter. So to show your outline, you just have to push 1, then 2 to go there and then “A” (if it is assigned to go back to the latest slide – shortcut in Keynote is “Z”) to get back to where you were coming from.

Here’s my OSCulator configuration file you can use as a start. Be aware – it’s only the Wii Remote buttons controlling shortcuts in Keynote. I’d really love to have somebody do more sophisticated things with this setup – like sliding the device through the air from left to right and back to move between slides etc. Or is something like that already available somewhere?

Also, if you’d like to use a Wii Remote with whatever kind of application on your Mac, I highly recommend to check out OSCulator.