Wii Guitar Hero Hack

Written by: Alan Parekh at 10:21 am. Filed under Cool Gadgets, Game Hacks

Josh Breckman took a normal Wii Guitar Hero and hacked it to work with his computer and audio keyboard. Watch his demo of the guitar at the end of the video, I am impressed by how well it works. Great job!

“I hacked my Wii Guitar Hero Guitar so it can actually be played like an instrument, with up to 45 different pitches at my disposal.

I play (with one or two minor mistakes) the verse, chorus and solo to “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, by Nirvana, to demonstrate this.”

Thanks to Josh for providing some additional information:

“I combined: WiimoteLib (http://blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun/archive/2007/03/14/1879033 .aspx)

and

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/audio-video/midiwrapper.aspx to handle midi stuff

past that, i just had to find the special code saying it was a guitar hero controller - similar to the nunchuck. (guitar hero was 0xfb, and nunchuck was 0xf3)

past that, in the same bit of code that looks for nunchuck/classic controller stuff, i managed to figure out the byte/bit patterns of the different keys:

mWiimoteState.GuitarState.Whammy = (float)(buff[offset + 3] - 240) / 10;
mWiimoteState.GuitarState.DownStrum = (buff[offset + 4] & 0×40) == 0;
mWiimoteState.GuitarState.UpStrum = (buff[offset + 5] & 0×01) == 0;
mWiimoteState.GuitarState.Note1 = (buff[offset + 5] & 0×10) == 0;
mWiimoteState.GuitarState.Note2 = (buff[offset + 5] & 0×40) == 0;
mWiimoteState.GuitarState.Note3 = (buff[offset + 5] & 0×08) == 0;
mWiimoteState.GuitarState.Note4 = (buff[offset + 5] & 0×20) == 0;
mWiimoteState.GuitarState.Note5 = (buff[offset + 5] & 0×80) == 0;
break;

From there, I had access to midi, what buttons were pressed, the wiimotelib already had the accelerometers rigged up, and all I had to do was put them all together :)”

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10 Responses to “Wii Guitar Hero Hack”

Chris Rybitski Says:
December 19th, 2007
This is cool. The first time I have ever seen a guitar hero control actually play music.
JoblessPunk Says:
December 19th, 2007
haha, thats pretty sweet man, but PLEASE say you know how to play a real guitar, or at lest trying to pick it up
colt Says:
December 19th, 2007
A Christian band called David Crowder Band used a guitar hero guitar to play a song that he wrote in a concert with over 1000 people. Now that was awesome! And yeah he’s an good guitar player also.
marks256 Says:
December 19th, 2007
Wow. If there was a hack of the year award, i would vote for this.

“hello my future girlfriend” lol…
Free Xbox 360 Says:
December 20th, 2007
doesnt sound too great, but an amazing idea and good job! btw nice playing
Tech Talk Says:
March 9th, 2008
How to Map Guitar Hero Controllers to MIDI…

A Band called The Guitar Zeros are using Guitar Hero controllers connected wirelessly to a laptop with special software to control software sounds. The end effect is the bands ability to play the Guitar and Bass with a great new…
Play guitar hero with a real guitar - Hacked Gadgets - DIY Tech Blog Says:
March 10th, 2008
[…] are certainly no shortage of Guitar Hero hacks out there, a while back we featured someone who made a guitar hero controller work as a real guitar. With a little soldering and some […]
Mike Says:
April 22nd, 2008
Lol man this is great, nice job. Love the song at the end, you rock (digitally : P)
Guitar Hero without the console | Development Feeds Says:
May 25th, 2008
[…] to go even farther, you can convert your GH controller into a midi controller. Many such mods (like this one) require a computer to do the actual work, but one of the most recent projects to hit the scene […]
from-nibly Says:
June 20th, 2008
ive made a script that uses the glovepie engine and just runs through midi. and seeing as you must have some sort of understanding of midi controls i was wondering if you could help me out.

the script is here.
http://www.wiili.org/index.php/GlovePIE:wii_midi_guitar

you can download the glovepie engine here.
http://rapidshare.com/files/80294422/GlovePIE030.zip

its pretty basic and sounds horible right now with just general midi output.

right now it cant do hammer ons and theres only 5 notes but it works you can strum up and down. theres a little lag but its not too bad.