Nintendo Wavebirds
Submitted by Yingling on Fri, 01/20/2006 - 14:18.
While playing with the Wi-Spy I decided to test and see what channels
different items around the house like to operate at. Turns out I found
something interesting about the Nintendo wireless controllers. I knew
they were operating at 2.4 GHz, but the channel selector at the bottom
has 16 different settings. That seemed odd. Check out the graph below,
this is with two Nintendo wavebird controllers operating at the same
time, set to "channels" 1 & 2.
wavebirds
Now they are designed in Japan and assembled in China, but shouldn't
they operate between channels 1-11? I guess the dial on the controller
isn't for the channel number, but a sub channel of sorts.
Nice screenshot! The channel shown in Wi-Spy corresponds to 802.11
channels, but channels are an abstraction of the actual frequency range
being used. It looks like Nintendo split the 2.4 GHz ISM Band into 16
non-overlapping channels starting at the top and counting down. If you
can get a 1-2 minute recording of the Nintendo Wavebird in action and
email to me I will post it on http://recordings.metageek.net.