WiiLi.org

[Endrick]

You know that firewire socket that you have on your computer and you're not using? That little thing runs at 30V unregulated according to the pinout diagram I found. USB is only pushing 5v so is limited in what we can do. Those of you with a little more electronic background please enlighten up on how we could make use of that to drive 8 - 10 IR LEDs?

Would it be possible to run the standard wii sensor bar off this thing too?

[walaber]

30V should be more than enough to power the standard sensor bar that the Wii uses, or a homebrew bar that uses 8-10 IR LEDs.
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Go Go Gadget Wii!

[Endrick]

i understand that it's got the power, but as I am no expert in electronics, what sort of pieces parts does someone need to get to tame 30V unregulated into a the right voltage to run either of these options?

[i81u812]

you could try making your own with higher resistors before the source which would work.

resistor codec http://www.audionotekits.com/resistorcodes.html its judged in OHMs I beliveve well because there's no current running through it. that would be another thing to read up on. with things like this its really just trial and error no one person can really help unless there doing it in real time with you or lives near you.

[fortunzfavor]

That would be a nice solution. I didn't realize it had that much power. Though, as I recall, there are different firewire protocols running at different speeds. I wonder if the power provisions are different? Surprisingly, my googling turned up no such mods. I can't answer your question either, but maybe some of the below will help.

See this page on someone using their firewire port for power. He's using it to power a modem that 'works on' 12v, which is about the same voltage you'd want running 10 ir leds. It provides about 15 watts. So I think it would provide up to 1250mah at 12v. I doubt the amp requirements of the sensor bar are very high.

See here for specs on different firewire ports, 400 (4 and 6 pin) and 800 (backward compatible 9 pin).

Here's another power mod for a router--plugged into the firewire port. He measures 220mah, presumably plenty.

They appear to both provide approximately 25 volts (though I'm pretty sure 4 pin ports like the one on my laptop provide no power at all), and plenty of current. It appears (don't take my world for this) that the current is being drawn as needed (as per the router's only drawing 200 when 1200 is available).

It's interesting, but it looks like using a 12v DC adapter would be less trouble for me. And that mod has been done before, so there isn't as much ambiguity.

[pipoxyz]

if everything fails, you could allways go oldskool and make a lpt interface.
tons and tons and tons of examples for that..
my tiniest lpt interface was a covox(soundcard over lpt)..used like 3 resistors or so;)