Worklog The Wii Squared (4 Wii's in one shell)

[BlackTSQ]

Hello Guys,

so my plan is to put 4 Nintendo Wii's a HDMI Multiviewer and a network switch into one compact housing. Now you're probably asking yourself, "why the hell would anyone wanna do that?".
Well, the goal is to have one console that i can easily take with me, plug into any modern TV and play Mario Kart Double Dash with up to 16 Players.

At the moment I'm testing my setup with 2 Wii's and an HDMI Multiviewer and it seems to work like intended.
Now i wanna get started in hardware modding the Wii's but i got a couple of questions:

1. Which Wii Model should i use? I get that the 6 Layer Boards have a higher power consumption, but since i'm not building a portable it shouldn't matter too much, i'm more worried about keeping 4 Wii's in a small space cool.
2. I've read that the 6 Layer Wii has a max power consumption at around 15W. Is that true and if so, how much do the newer revisions have?
3. For the power regulators, do i need to use 16x PTH08080 or are there any other voltage regulators with higher amps so i can use 1 regulator for each voltage for all 4 consoles? Otherwise it's gonna get quite expensive

I'll probably have more questions down the line, but for now that should be enough to get me started and order the missing parts i still need.

Thanks in advance

 

[Viilmo]

You need 8 consoles for 16 player double dash.

 

[Okiguess]

um acthually its its the wii ^4 and for 16 player double dash it would be the wii ^8

 

[Shank]

1- You could use either, but 4 layer boards would obviously be better.
2 - about 8.5 watts for 6 layer, about 5 watts for trimmed 4 layer.
3 - A single PTH regulator is not powerful enough to run more than one 4 layer wii. I suspect it cannot power a single 6 layer wii due to how much more current they draw. The PTR08100 can put out a lot more current. Those may do the trick, and may be able to power multiple wiis from a single regulator, but you would have to do some calculations.

Have you tried double dash lan on Nintendont with 4 wiis? It's genuinely a pretty bad experience. It runs very poorly, is super laggy, and has tons of stutters and slowdowns. I suspect the added latency of the multiviewer would compound as well. I would recommend giving this setup and configuration a try before cutting the boards up and trying to integrate it all.

 

[BlackTSQ]

Why would i need 8 consoles? As far as i know you can play split screen with 4 consoles. So 2 Players on each of the 2 split screens riding on one kart.
4 Wiis have 16 gamecube controller ports.

I do plan to build a second one if the first one works out well, so that each wii can output one screen in full resolution.

 

[BlackTSQ]

1- You could use either, but 4 layer boards would obviously be better.
2 - about 8.5 watts for 6 layer, about 5 watts for trimmed 4 layer.
3 - A single PTH regulator is not powerful enough to run more than one 4 layer wii. I suspect it cannot power a single 6 layer wii due to how much more current they draw. The PTR08100 can put out a lot more current. Those may do the trick, and may be able to power multiple wiis from a single regulator, but you would have to do some calculations.

Have you tried double dash lan on Nintendont with 4 wiis? It's genuinely a pretty bad experience. It runs very poorly, is super laggy, and has tons of stutters and slowdowns. I suspect the added latency of the multiviewer would compound as well. I would recommend giving this setup and configuration a try before cutting the boards up and trying to integrate it all.

Hey thanks for the reply!

So i did some digging and found that the PTH08T240W has pretty much the same specs as the standard one but can handle 10Amps which should be enough to power 4 wiis. And it looks like it only costs twice as much as the PTH08080, so i would save half the price.

I only tried the lan mode with 2 wiis until now, but that worked flawlessly. Gonna get a third wii for free this weekend, then i can do another test.

Until now i'm only using wiis i got for free, but the two i have already seem to be 6 layer ones. But i don't mind looking for more 4 layer boards.

Power wise i've got a 100w 12v power supply in a pretty small form factor, according to your infos that should easily be enough then

#edit: I just had a look at the regulator you suggested and that one looks even better at least in terms of availability and cost. Since the pht08080 has 2.25A one with 10A should be more than enough. 2.25*4 < 10 or am i thinking too simple?

 

[BlackTSQ]

um acthually its its the wii ^4 and for 16 player double dash it would be the wii ^8

According to that logic it would be Wii x4.
If you see the i's from wii as roman numbers you get 2 and if you square that you'll get 4. And i thought it might be a funny reference to the gamecube ^^

 

[Viilmo]

Why would i need 8 consoles? As far as i know you can play split screen with 4 consoles. So 2 Players on each of the 2 split screens riding on one kart.
4 Wiis have 16 gamecube controller ports.

"For Mario Kart, up to 16 players can play simultaneously across eight consoles, with two players controlling each kart. When two consoles are used, up to four players can play per console, with each player controlling their own kart. If more than two consoles are used, only two players can play on each system cooperatively as two characters sharing one kart"
Taken from here

 

[BlackTSQ]

"For Mario Kart, up to 16 players can play simultaneously across eight consoles, with two players controlling each kart. When two consoles are used, up to four players can play per console, with each player controlling their own kart. If more than two consoles are used, only two players can play on each system cooperatively as two characters sharing one kart"
Taken from here

Video of 16 player mario kart on 4 Wiis (using dolphin)

Not my video, but it sure seems possible according to that video.

 

[Wesk]

Have you tried double dash lan on Nintendont with 4 wiis? It's genuinely a pretty bad experience. It runs very poorly, is super laggy, and has tons of stutters and slowdowns. I suspect the added latency of the multiviewer would compound as well. I would recommend giving this setup and configuration a try before cutting the boards up and trying to integrate it all.

Just to add to this, there's not enough bandwidth on the USB side of things on the Wii to run both the game and transmit network data without it becoming stupidly laggy.

Running the game from the SD slot instead frees up USB bandwidth and will lead to much better network performance.

 

[Shank]

Video of 16 player mario kart on 4 Wiis (using dolphin)

>On 4 wiis
>Using dolphin

These 2 statements are not compatible. Dolphin is an emulator that runs on computers and other devices. The wii does not run dolphin or emulate GameCube games. The person in the video was not running them on Wiis. Try running more than 2 wiis. Every one you add, the issues get worse. Test all 4 running before you dive down the path of cutting things up.

@Wesk I have yet to see anyone confirm it's a USB bandwidth issue and test this with SD loading on 4 game consoles. I've been told the issue is a combination of the poor netcode of double dash, and how bba emulation is implemented on nintendont. Not saying you are incorrect, because you very well may be correct, but I have not seen conclusive evidence/proof.

 

[Wesk]

@Wesk I have yet to see anyone confirm it's a USB bandwidth issue and test this with SD loading on 4 game consoles. I've been told the issue is a combination of the poor netcode of double dash, and how bba emulation is implemented on nintendont. Not saying you are incorrect, because you very well may be correct, but I have not seen conclusive evidence/proof.

It was a general statement on how the USB bandwidth is limited and will affect network speed significantly and not specifically based on connecting 4 Wii's. I've already confirmed significant network lag reductions when loading games from SD instead of USB when connecting two Wii's. Whether 4 Wii's are playable in this manner is another thing entirely but for best results games need to be loaded from anything but the USB port.

 

[BlackTSQ]

>On 4 wiis
>Using dolphin

These 2 statements are not compatible. Dolphin is an emulator that runs on computers and other devices. The wii does not run dolphin or emulate GameCube games. The person in the video was not running them on Wiis. Try running more than 2 wiis. Every one you add, the issues get worse. Test all 4 running before you dive down the path of cutting things up.

@Wesk I have yet to see anyone confirm it's a USB bandwidth issue and test this with SD loading on 4 game consoles. I've been told the issue is a combination of the poor netcode of double dash, and how bba emulation is implemented on nintendont. Not saying you are incorrect, because you very well may be correct, but I have not seen conclusive evidence/proof.

I was just posting the video because someone said that you need 8 wii's for 16 players. Even tho it's emulated in the video there are still only 4 gc instances for 16 players...

I will test the speed issues as soon as i have all 4 wii's.

 

[BlackTSQ]

I was finally able to get my 3rd Wii yesterday and started testing double dash via lan. There are indeed some slowdowns that occur seemingly random, it's not gamebreaking but would definitly be annoying during gameplay. I will try loading the game from SD card only today and test some other scenarios.
Is this problem documented anywhere already? I could only find someone giving out a bounty for anyone that can fix MKDD's Lan mode, but that seems to be related to playing online on emulators with virtual lan networks and the game not beeing able to handle higher pings which shouldn't be the issue in a small isolated local network.

 

[Shank]

It gets even worse with four

 

[BlackTSQ]

Allright Guys, did some more testing and i have great news.
Loading the game from the sd card is a massive improvement. More or less no lag or slowdowns with 3 Wii's and 5 Karts in game. Gonna upload a gameplay video and post it here as soon as it's done. The only slowdowns i experienced where really minor like a few mms and only happend a maximum of 3 times per 3 laps, i'm not even sure that slowdowns like this arent happening on one console sometime.

 

[BlackTSQ]

Here's the promised video (Testing Video).

Time to get Wii number 4!

 

[Viilmo]

It gets even worse with four

 

[BlackTSQ]

Allright, as Shank predicted / warned me, connecting 4 Wii's using nitendont makes the game lag to a point where it's unplayable.

I don't wanna give up on my project just yet tho and figured i'd give it a try using devolution instead of nintendont since it has a completely different implementation of the BBA emulation.

Sadly I'm not able to make the Wii's find each other in DD Lan mode using devolution. I have set up all 4 Wii's with a static IP address in the same subnet connected to an unmanaged switch and the option "Mark Network connection as tested" enabled in Priiloader. This setup works for nintendont, but doesn't seem to work for devolution.

I know, that this probably isn't the right forum for that but maybe one of you guys have some experience with devolution and maybe knows how to fix it.

Thank you

 

[Shank]

Unfortunately, I think its unlikely members on this forum will be familiar with Devolution. The Bitbuilt and the Wii modding scene kicked into gear shortly after Nintendon't became a viable alternative. The few of us around before BB, Nintendont and the Wii portablizing revolution went straight from Dios Mios to Nintendont. If you do have success with Devolution, please follow up though.

As for alternatives if Devolution doesn't pan out, it does look like some alternative BBA solutions will be hitting the scene soon. @trevor403 has been working on FlippyDrive, a gamecube ode/modchip thing which may open some doors. It would likely work on the Wii as well, granted the Wii would run in gamecube mode, but that shouldn't be a problem for this build. WebHDX appears to be working on an alternative that utilizes the SP2 on the gamecube, so a gamecube-based build instead of a Wii build a possible avenue with that option.