Normally you control a computer with a keyboard and mouse. But, the the purpose of a Raspberry Pi is to invent something new. To that end, you have have to come up with some new, creative ways to get information into the RPi. The Wii controllers are a miracle of engineering and communicate to the Wii (and whatever else you would like) using Bluetooth. Using a USB Bluetooth interface and some simple programming you can use the Wii controller as an input for whatever you need. Check out this video:
If you need more information on the subject, see the Brian’s Life Blog. Also, I will be posting a follow-up on how to connect the balance board.
With the QEMU software you can run a a Raspberry Pi emulator in Windows for free. QEMU is an open source application for creating virtual hardware. It is similar to VMWare and Virtual Box. Where it differs is that it can CPUs and they have created a virtualization for the Raspberry Pi CPU (the ARM1176JZFS). Also, all the required tools and kernel tweaks have been made and collected into a single downloadable package. The whole package is available here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rpiqemuwindows/
Simply put, the Raspberry Pi is a low end computer. It doesn’t have any secret technology. It wasn’t put together by NASA. It doesn’t have MIT patents. It was the idea of four guy from the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory to put affordable computes into the hand of kids to help them learn how to program.
Based on off-the-shelf parts, the Raspberry Pi is a credit=card sized computer that is designed to be tinkered with. Plug in a USB keyboard and mouse and a HDMI display and it will start Linux. It doesn’t boast high speed or a great graphics but it does offer low cost and the ability to ‘add’ features and hardware (to hack it). See the hardware pages for detailed information about how to add hardware.
