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channel-blue

July 21, 2026 2 min read
wiicatprotoblueskygame

Channel Blue is a Bluesky client for the Nintendo Wii. Browse your timeline, read posts, and compose replies via Wiimote and USB keyboard, built on the wolfram C SDK.

Status

Wii-installable MVP. The Wii UI, USB-keyboard sign-in, timeline, thread views, discovery tabs, avatar pipeline, SD session persistence, Wolfram adapter, and mbedTLS-backed Wii HTTPS transport are implemented and cross-compile to a .dol. Live PDS login, TLS, WiFi timing, and SD durability still require validation on real Wii hardware.

Features

  • Browse home timeline (reverse-chronological feed)
  • Read individual posts and threads
  • Compose posts and replies (USB keyboard input)
  • Like/unlike, repost/unrepost, and follow
  • Search accounts, view notifications and profile
  • Fetch and display author avatars
  • Fetch and display Wii-sized image, external, and video-thumbnail previews
  • Session persistence on SD card

Building

# Install devkitPro toolchain
sudo dkp-pacman -S wii-dev ppc-freetype ppc-libpng ppc-zlib

# Build libwolfram for PPC
../wolfram/tools/build_wii_mbedtls.sh
cmake -S ../wolfram -B ../wolfram/build-wii \
  -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../wolfram/.devdeps/wii.cmake \
  -DWOLFRAM_BUILD_WII=ON -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build ../wolfram/build-wii -j

# Build Channel Blue
make
make bundle

Installing

Copy the build output to your SD card:

sd:/
  apps/
    channel-blue/
      boot.dol       ← channel-blue.dol (renamed)
      meta.xml       ← from repo root
      icon.png       ← from repo root
      entropy.bin    ← unique 64-byte TLS seed

Controls

Wiimote Classic Controller Action
D-pad D-pad / left stick Navigate and scroll
A A Select / Open post
B B Back / Cancel
Plus Plus / R trigger Load next page / refresh
Minus Minus / L trigger Compose post
1 X Like/unlike selected post
2 Y Repost/unrepost selected post
Home Home Open session menu

Dependencies

Library Purpose License
wolfram AT Protocol / XRPC MIT
libogc Wii hardware abstraction Various
mbedTLS TLS/HTTPS Apache-2.0
FreeType Font rendering FreeType GPL/FTL
libpng PNG decoding libpng license
lwIP TCP/IP stack BSD

Licence

Channel Blue is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later — see LICENSE.

The wolfram SDK it links against is MIT-licensed.

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