https://lotide.fbxl.net/api/stable/posts/11405/href
This is a little project I worked on over the weekend once I realized that my Wii mini, which I previously didn't think could be very useful for me, could be set up with the homebrew channel using the bluebomb exploit.
I own a nes mini, snes mini, and playstation mini, and they're all neat toys, but the problem with all of them is that I can't really use them in my living room. The TV is mounted on the wall fairly high up, and I don't have a shelf or anything, and I don't feel like running 100 feet of USB cables all over the place just because I might want to play some super nintendo games once a year.
The Wii was a nice solution by itself. It's small, and you can plug a classic controller into the wiimote so you can play games wirelessly and tuck them into a basket for the 364 days you're not playing wii games.
The Wii mini is different from the Wii in that it's a much simpler device. It doesn't have an SD card slot, it doesn't have a wifi transciever, it can't use Ethernet at all in its unmodified form. Also, the device doesn't have a frontloading DVD drive like the wii, instead it has a top loading DVD drive like the original playstation, so you can't just simply bolt it to the wall with a piece of wood or strap or plastic like you could with a Wii, because you won't be able to open the DVD drive. Being able to run homebrew was the final straw that made the project viable and interesting.
My solution ended up being very simple: The sides of the wii mini are at an angle and come to a point. I measured the dimensions of that angle and created a wall mounted bracket, then printed 3 of them in PLA.
A standard Wii has many mounting brackets available since the Wii was the most popular game console of that generation, but the wii mini was a last gasp and so it isn't really popular and there aren't really options out there, so this is a perfect solution for home manufacturing.
I realized that the tolerances required to hold the wii mini using these was extremely tight, so I used a piece of lined paper to create a template by putting the Wii into its mounts sitting on the table, then I used a felt marker to mark drill holes. Even so, it wasn't as precise as I'd hoped, and I also had an issue with the anchors I used. I've used plastic screw in anchors on a few other projects and it wasn't a problem, but these anchors absolutely hated my living room wall, so that became way more complicated than I would have liked. It does work, but it's not perfect.
If I were to design something like this again, I would remove the requirement to perfectly mount the anchors by printing a piece of plastic holding the three pieces in the exact spot so I didn't need to mount them perfectly. I would probably try to make it a hangable holder so I could just put a couple hangers on the wall and hang the wii holder off of it rather than try to drill securely into the wall.
Regardless, it does work as you can see, and I'm happy enough with the results. My favorite prints are the ones that quietly become a permanent part of my life, and this is a great example of that. The Wii is being held behind my TV, hidden but accessible.
