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Nintendo Wii Nunchuck as a joystick

Added by KalleP over 11 years ago

Hi,

I picked up a used joystick for US$0.50 so thought I would see what it can do.
It has an analogue joystick, two buttons and a 3 axis accelerometer.

http://hacknmod.com/hack/how-to-cheap-accelerometer-using-wii-nunchuck/

How hard would it be to intyerface it to our LAOS board. It looks like I2C or similar and has a 4 wire connection (3.3V I think).

I figured it would make a neat pendant. Use the joystick with some transfer function to control the X and Y axis at variable speed and use the forward and back tilt to control the Z axis to focus while holding the one button. Use the other button to test fire the laser.

Anyone got any thoughts on using such a pendant. It looks like they are US$12.50 new but likely US$5 from a charity shop when available, I was lucky, all cables are US$0.50.

Kalle
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Johannesburg, South Africa


Replies (2)

RE: Nintendo Wii Nunchuck as a joystick - Added by Springuin over 11 years ago

Technically it would not be too hard; the nunchuck is I2C, interfacing to it is done before and there is sufficient documentation. Note that the Laos I2C bus to the display runs on 5V where the nunchuck uses 3.3V, so you need 3.3V from somewhere else and you need to use level converters for the I2C (Two n-fets and two pullup resistors on the nunchuck side, like this: http://www.bajdi.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/logic-level-converter-schematic.png).

The other part is implementing it in the firmware in such a way that the firmware works without the nunchuck and using the nunchuck does not interfere with the rest of the program.

Enjoy!

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