3 methods to show your previous Wii Remote right into a Home Assistant controller
Despite its age, the Wii Remote can nonetheless be a helpful system. It contains Bluetooth connectivity, movement sensors, an infrared digital camera, and a number of bodily buttons. These options make it a fantastic possibility for interacting along with your sensible house, and there are a couple of ways in which you could possibly get your Wii Remote to manage Home Assistant.
Replace the electronics with OpenMote
An ESP32 turns a Wii Remote into a sensible house controller
ESP32 improvement boards are superior for smart home projects. They’re low-cost and versatile and sufficiently small to suit inside many units. That’s precisely what the customized OpenMote board does along with your Wii Remote.
OpenMote replaces your Wii Remote’s unique circuit board with a customized board constructed round an ESP32-S3. It’s designed to suit inside the unique Wii Remote and work with its bodily buttons. It successfully turns the sport controller into a very completely different system that you need to use to manage your sensible house.
OpenMote runs ESPHome and connects to your house Wi-Fi community. When you press a button on the Wii Remote, the knowledge is handed on to Home Assistant, and you need to use it to manage units or run automations. You get to decide on what every button or movement motion does.
The IR emitter can study codes out of your IR remotes, so you need to use your Wii Remote to manage your TV or flip in your previous AC unit. You may even use the system for its unique objective and pair it as a normal Bluetooth LE gamepad with a PC, Android telephone, or Steam Deck.
There are at present two options available for pre-order on Crowd Supply till the top of October 2026: a completely assembled distant and a PCB to mod your personal Wii Remote. Orders are anticipated to ship in February 2027, and the Home Assistant firmware is already available on GitHub.
Use CWiid to attach your Wii Remote to a Raspberry Pi
Your Wii Remote can speak to a Pi over Bluetooth
CWiid is a set of open-source Linux instruments that you need to use to get a Wii Remote to speak with a Linux pc corresponding to a Raspberry Pi over Bluetooth. You needn’t take your distant aside or set up any customized PCBs; it ought to work with a normal Wii Remote.
There’s a really helpful YouTube video by The Raspberry Pi Guy demonstrating find out how to join your Wii Remote to a Raspberry Pi, with a GitHub repository containing an set up script and a few pattern Python code.
The video solely exhibits find out how to get your Wii Remote to speak with the Raspberry Pi quite than Home Assistant, however there are a number of ways in which you possibly can use this setup to manage your sensible house. You may set off Home Assistant actions utilizing the REST API through Python scripts that run on the Pi or use a Python script to publish the acquired inputs from the Wii Remote utilizing MQTT, and Home Assistant may then reply to these MQTT messages.
There’s additionally a device known as wminput which helps you to use the Wii Remote like a mouse. You may join the Raspberry Pi to your TV through HDMI, open Home Assistant in an online browser, and use the Wii Remote to manage your sensible house dashboard.
Control Home Assistant in Windows utilizing Touchmote
Make your Wii Remote right into a mouse
Touchmote is Windows software program that permits you to use a Wii Remote as a mouse or touchscreen enter system. It was initially supposed to let folks management Windows utilizing a Wii Remote, and in contrast to CWiid, it is a Windows app quite than Linux instruments that require customized scripts.
You do not want a Wii console or a Raspberry Pi; the Wii Remote talks on to your Windows pc. The unique venture is previous, however there is a fork with a construct that was up to date as lately as October 2026. The Wii Remote detects infrared mild from the Wii Sensor Bar, permitting Touchmote to calculate the place you are pointing, and there is help for utilizing two sensor bars positioned each above and under the display screen.
You can use the Wii Remote to manage the pointer in Windows by shifting the distant round and utilizing the buttons to work together with no matter you are pointing at. You may construct a touch-friendly Home Assistant dashboard and use the Wii Remote to work together with the dashboard gadgets and management your sensible house.
This means you do not want any customized code. Once Touchmote is configured, you may open the Home Assistant dashboard in a browser and use the Wii Remote to manage the pointer to work together with it.
Your Wii Remote should still have life left in it
It’s insane that the Nintendo Wii is 20 years previous; it solely looks like yesterday that I dealt with my first Wii Remote. Two a long time on, that distant can nonetheless be a helpful system, whether or not you need to exchange its PCB or simply use it to manage a Home Assistant dashboard.
