Semiconductor History | 原相科技, 創新一路 — The Camera at the Tip of the Wii Remote

At the narrow end of a Wii Remote there is a dark window the size of a fingernail, and behind it sits a camera designed in 新竹科學園區.

On 11 May 2006 原相科技 (PixArt Imaging) announced that it would supply object-tracking technology for Nintendo's new controller, six months before the console reached shops.

The part is not a camera in the ordinary sense. It watches infrared light, finds the bright points in its field, and reports their coordinates, and the console works out where the remote is aimed from the positions of the two infrared clusters in the bar under the television.

Nothing about that required an advanced sensor. It required a cheap one that could find a few dots and report them quickly.

原相 began as CondorVision Technology, an American design house staffed largely by engineers who had come out of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

聯華電子 decided to invest in 1998 and moved the operation to Taiwan, putting 蔡明介 in as chairman; the Taiwanese company was incorporated that July, and Tsai recruited 黃森煌 to run it.

Its early money came from the sensors that let an optical mouse see a desk.

Pointing at a screen turned out to be the same problem in different light.

CommonWealth Magazine visited in October 2007 and found a company of 144 people that was Nintendo's sole supplier of sensor ICs for the Wii, with revenue of NT$3.99 billion for 2006.

Huang described the method to the magazine as taking old technology into new applications and new markets.

That is a fair description of what the 聯家軍 design houses did generally. None of them was pushed out of UMC holding a leading-edge process, so they competed on knowing an application better than anyone else did.

The office is on 創新一路, among the fabs and the ordinary low buildings of the park.

There is nothing on the outside to tell you what is made there, which is true of almost every address in this collection.

Photo: Wii Remote with wrist strap, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; the infrared window sits at the far end of the body, past the buttons.

Second image: the Wii Remote with its Classic Controller, photographed in July 2007 by Stephane Calonnec, public domain.