I have the Nintendo-brand. When i first got it i had it working with the exact same sketch but i think that maybe I reversed the polarity one time and burnt it out, but I'm not sure if they are protected against that or not.

I have the power and ground plugged into the power rail of my breadboard already. Do you know if the Wiichuck protects against reverse polarity though?

sorry, i actually have a Bare Bones Board but i always refer to it as an arduino and for the pins I'm using analog 5(clock) and 4(data). Also i was able to get the same program working a while ago but that was in a different version of the arduino software. I think it was 12 or 13.

Hi, i got a wiichuck and wanted to use it in a project of mine, but i just can't get it to read from the wiichuck. I loaded the wiichuck demo program and when it isn't plugged into the adapter the arduino prints to serial but when it is plugged in the serial just stops and i get no reading. Any help would be appreciated.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA0ocu_oN74[/media]

Thanks everyone for all of your suggestions. I ended up just going with the IR emiter/detecter method. It works pretty well.

Here is a video of it working:
[media]<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/HA0ocu_oN74&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/HA0ocu_oN74&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>[/media]

That would be good if I was working with only one pipe but I'm working with 8.

Well what kind of mic are you thinking of? I was thinking of just an electret mic.

Thanks for all the suggestions

I take it that one end of the pipe is sealed?

No both ends are open. Like sciguy said, doing that would lower the pitch and we don't want that.

would an IR or ultrasonic distance finder work?

Yes, that would work but i'm doing this with all of my own parts and any new parts I have to buy. So doing that wold be too expensive.

why not just use a microphone to pick up the noise of the tube being hit?

Well that might work but I think it would be too unreliable because if the kids around it were making a lound noise, that might trigger it.

Hi, I need help finding the best way to tell if someone has hit the end of a PVC pipe. I'm working on a project for my scout troop that will be used in our gateway at the 2010 national jamboree. Our gateway theme is the blue man group so we decided to put PVC pipe instruments for people to play. What I want to do is have lights inside each pipe so when you push one of the four buttons on the panel the pipes will start lighting up in a certain order to tell you wich ones to hit to play a song. When a button is pushed the pipes you need to hit light up and stay lit until you hit them. then the next pipes in the sequence will light up.

I first tried to use piezo elements to sense the hit but the holder we made for the pipes acts as a shock absorber and the piezo picks up almost no vibration. I am thinking of using some infrared emiters and detectors and mounting them on the inside of the pipe so that they point out the pipe. Then, when a paddle hits the pipe, it will reflect the IR back in to the detector. the problem with that is that you don't need to hit the pipe for the sensors to detect it. Are there any other ways to determine if the pipe has been hit? Any help is appreciated.

Wow thanks, that worked! the weird thing though is that it was just sitting there the whole time. but like you said, it temporarily fixed it. do you know how to permanently fix it?

Hi, I have been working on making an airsoft turret that when someone comes within a certain distance, it starts shooting. I am using the PING sensor for the distance sensing. now i got it all built, with the exception of a few sensors that i am waiting to buy, and i started to test it. It worked fine for the first few days, but then today when I tried it the PING sensor is reading 124in 317cm no matter how far the object is. I didn't change any thing about my circuit or program. Could someone please help me figure out what is wrong?

Oh, first of all i am using a RBBB not an actual Arduino board but that hasn't mattered in the past, and for the gun, i have a power supply powering it through a small relay controlled by the RBBB. I also have a rotating base for it and the servo for that is controlled by a SSC-32 servo controller.

well in the example the setup is for linux but i'm using xp.

I don't get how you are supposed to connect to the arduino. I have the manager connected but what do you do to connect?