The Wiimote contains a 3 axis accelerometer, a high resolution IR camera and a bluetooth connection. Substantial work has been done to interface the Wiimote to a PC. The BlueSoliel bluetooth driver supports the Wiimote as an HID device. Here are some instructions on how to connect your wiimote to the PC. Once it is connected there are several freeware device drivers that will allow you to use the wiimote as either a mouse or joystick device. These include: wiinremote and glovePIE
Using wiinremote, I mapped the X and Y axis of the accelerometer to the mouse controls and mapped the right and left mouse buttons to the two lower buttons on the wiimote. Booting up Vpython, and opening the “randombox” demo program, I am able to control rotation about the two axis by inclining and twisting the wiimote. I can zoom in and out by holding both buttons and inclining the remote.
Since there are 3 axis to the accelerometer, additional work with the HID device driver should let me control the rotation and zoom with a single button press.
This first video is me demonstrating the capabilities of the wiimote to control Vpython.
Here is my four year old daughter learning to use the wiimote to control Vpython.