SlashGear

Pleo’s fate may be decided by a bankruptcy sale, but the robot dinosaurs already out in the wild are too busy being hacked to worry about IP.  Modder Andrey has developed a system which allows him to remotely-control his Pleo via a Wii Nunchuck, with the head, tail and basic movements all mapped to the Nintendo controller’s buttons and motion-sensors.

Video demo after the cut

The system uses an Arduino board with an XBee RF module and a custom connector for the Nintendo controller.  Meanwhile Pleo gets an XBee RF link of its own, to receive control signals from the Nunchuck.  If the dinobot is turned on with a certain SD card loaded, it will automatically wait to receive remote instructions rather than going into the normal autonomous mode.

Andrey has made all the code available, and it’s easily modified if you’d rather different controls map to different Pleo functions.  It’s hacks like these that show us just how much we’ll miss Pleo if whoever buys his IP doesn’t continue to make the little dino.

[via Hack a Day]