Wii Wand of Power watchdog circuit

Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to get up to go do something, but didn’t want to leave a game for fear your system would go to sleep while you were away and you couldn’t use a software hack to nudge the system? Maker Todd Harrison had a similar issue and decided to build a device that closes a circuit every 25 seconds inside a Wiimote shaped candy tin.

It’s just a simple timing circuit made of discreet elements that engages a reed relay ever 25 sec. This relay in turn closes a circuit in my keyboard for the left arrow key. Being this external circuit is self powered I can simply turn it on when I want a game or application to think I’m at my computer when I’m not. I know there are software hacks that can do this and I did try a lot of them but this particular on line game I play had a way to block such software hacks. I had to go old school, which is not hard for an old guy, and do it with hardware.

7 Responses to Wii Wand of Power watchdog circuit

Anonymous on January 11th, 2010 at 6:57 am said:

Sounds like someone is AFKing in Alterac Valley

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- Anonymous on January 11th, 2010 at 7:47 am said:
  
  I came here from my RSS Reader to say exactly the same thing! I wonder if he’s that 80 Paladin in quest greens doing turns at Frostwolf…
  
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Herohtar on January 11th, 2010 at 8:04 am said:

Cool, but not needed; just create a script with AutoHotkey that moves your mouse back and forth or does a key press. As far as I know there is no game that prevents that from being used.

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- Todd Harrison on January 11th, 2010 at 12:10 pm said:
  
  I did try that but the game I play blocks every software tool I tried.
  
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John on January 11th, 2010 at 8:50 am said:

So what’s worse, a piece of human garbage who goes afk in a pvp game and spoils it for 39 other people or blizzard who makes a game that rewards time played more than anything else?

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- Anonymous on January 11th, 2010 at 10:01 am said:
  
  you can also jam a penny in to a key to keep it pressed down.
  
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  Todd Harrison on January 11th, 2010 at 12:07 pm said:
  
  The penny trick only works for 20 seconds for the game I play. Then the game sees this activity and logs you out anyway.
  
  And the game I play is not WOW or any other game where being on line gives you any advantage. It’s just annoying to reconnect to my game and get back to where I was just for being inactive for a minute.
  
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