Mardy (Entratas super video)

Teaser: connecting Nintendo Switch controllers to the Wii

Alberto Mardegan — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 13:13:06 GMT

A few months ago I started playing with the Bluetooth controller embedded in the Nintendo Wii, to see if it was possible to get it to connect to other devices than just the Wii remotes. If you ask internet forums, you might fall into the impression that the Wii is not using a standard Bluetooth controller, or that it has been somehow "crippled" in order to restrict it to connect to the Wiimotes only, but that's not the case: it's an ordinary controller from its era, it's just that the Wii software (both the official SDK and the homebrew libogc) only uses it for the Wiimotes.

I first started looking into lwBT, the bluetooth stack used in libogc, but I quickly realized that it was impossible to get full control over the controller via this library: it has been adapted to work with the subset of the HID protocol used by the Wiimotes, and even if you can issue bluetooth commands to the controller via the HCI layer, you cannot receive the replies, since they are already intercepted by lwBT and there's no way to hook into them.

So I started writing my own little bluetooth stack, bt-embedded which from the ground up has been designed to be used by embedded devices and covering the use case of serving different clients running in a single process, and I've integrated it into embedded-game-controller (though this is not merged into the master branch yet) in order to allow connecting to bluetooth controllers. And in the last couple of days I've written a little ugly program to visualize the controllers in a 3D scene, in order to better test them:

Yes, the 3D model sucks, it was a nice model when I downloaded it from a free site, but then heavily reduced the number of polygons using Blender and went a bit too far; I'll do a better model later. The accelerometer information is not shown yet (I'd like to use it to actually tilt the controller, instead of using the joystick), but that will not be hard.

At the moment, the only supported controllers are the Nintendo Switch Pro controller (I'm using a clone here) and the Joy-cons, so there's still quite some work to do to add more.

It's been a journey in which I learned a lot about Bluetooth and USB and, who knows, maybe this will come handy in the future too.

Cammino quindi penso - 2021-06-07 - Il senso di una discussione

Alberto Mardegan — Mon, 07 Jun 2021 19:35:30 GMT

Qualche consiglio su come impostare una discussione in modo che risulti un dialogo civile e possibilmente pure fruttifero.

Cammino quindi penso - 2021-05-18 - Palestina, conflitto mal raccontato

Alberto Mardegan — Tue, 18 May 2021 09:54:36 GMT

I nostri mezzi di informazione raccontano gli eventi in Palestina in maniera distorta, mettendo sullo stesso piano l'aggressore e l'aggredito — talvolta, addirittura, imputando a quest'ultimo le vittime di questo conflitto.

Cammino quindi penso - 2021-04-16 - Tramite conoscenti

Alberto Mardegan — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 19:53:58 GMT

Sull'importanza di una rete di conoscenze, e di come la didattica a distanza sia un ostacolo alla sua formazione.

Cammino quindi penso - 2021-04-12 - La situazione COVID-19 in Russia

Alberto Mardegan — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 06:14:11 GMT

Dopo una pausa di due anni e due giorni, riprendo (non so per quanto!) a dilettarvi con la serie “Cammino quindi penso”, mostrandovi com'è la situazione COVID-19 qui in Russia, a San Pietroburgo.

Relaxar se in le forestes del Russia

Alberto Mardegan — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 15:02:39 GMT

Al fin de martio, in compania de mi amate consorte, io passava un par de dies in un casetta disperse inter le forestes del Russia, a un centeno de chilometros a nord de Sancte Petroburgo. Illo non esseva vermente “disperse”, viste que illo esseva parte de un village de relaxation constituite de un decena de casettas simile, ma illo esseva comocunque lontan de botecas e de centros habitate. Con un breve promenada de un par de minutas on poteva attinger le ripas del laco Vuoksa, que nos jam habeva cognoscite le estate passate.

Le casetta esseva parve, non plus de cinque metros per latere, ma illo esseva equippate con aqua e electricitate. Io filmava un breve video pro conseniar lo al posteritate (vole ben excusar me pro mi enorme facie barbose al initio):

Pensatas in interlingua - 2019-06-30 - Dracon in le parco

Alberto Mardegan — Sun, 30 Jun 2019 16:14:43 GMT

Quando vos imagina un cosa que ha nulle senso, e vos es secur que iste cosa non pote exister in ulle parte del mundo, il ha un bon probabilitate de trovar lo in Russia.

Intervista al dottor Fabio Franchi sui vaccini

Alberto Mardegan — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 19:02:25 GMT

Vi propongo questa intervista, realizzata da Byoblu, al dottor Fabio Franchi:

Si tratta di un punto di vista sui vaccini molto diverso da quello propagandato dai mezzi di infomazione, con conclusioni sorprendenti ma ben argomentate. Se avete un'oretta di tempo, spendetela per guardare questo video: non ve ne pentirete.

Cammino quindi penso - 2019-04-09 - Fecondazione artificiale

Alberto Mardegan — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 20:34:38 GMT

Nel Nebraska, una signora di 61 anni ha dato alla luce una bambina concepita mediante la fecondazione artificiale.

Ubports at the LinuxPiter conference

Alberto Mardegan — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 16:07:23 GMT

Last November I was invited to talk at the LinuxPiter conference. I held a presentation of the Ubports project, to which I still contribute in my little spare time.

The video recording from the conference has finally been published:

(there's also a version in Russian)

There was not a big audience, to be honest, but those that were there expressed a lot of interest in the project.