How can I permanently pair a Wii Balance Board with an Ubuntu PC?

ubuntu bluetooth wii
Stavros Korokithakis picture Stavros Korokithakis · Oct 7, 2013 · Viewed 8.3k times · Source

I have a Wii Balance Board, for which I've written a weight-measuring script (detailed here). However, I can't get the board to pair with the computer.

I don't want to have to put it in sync mode every time, as it's very time-consuming, but it won't accept any PIN code I enter. I tried "000000", the host's address in reverse hex (if the host is 00:11:22:33:44:55, then I tried the PIN "$554433221100" with bluez, same with the board's address, neither worked).

Using the built-in Ubuntu Bluetooth wizard fails horribly, though, as, no matter which PIN I specify, it always generates a random one, asks me to enter it and fails half a second later. I tried the above with the bt-device utility.

Has anyone managed to pair a balance board (or a wiimote) with Ubuntu (or anything/find the PIN, really)?

Answer

Stavros Korokithakis picture Stavros Korokithakis · Oct 9, 2013

It turns out that bluez 4.101 doesn't support hex PIN codes. Patching it with the appropriate code and recompiling worked.

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