A 3D Printed Micro:Bit Nunchuk

As [Paul Bardini] explains on the Thingiverse page for his “Micro:Bit Hand Controller”, the Bluetooth radio baked into the BBC’s educational microcontroller makes it an ideal choice for remotely controlling things. You just need to give it a nice enclosure, a joystick, a couple of buttons, and away you go. …read more

Continue reading A 3D Printed Micro:Bit Nunchuk

Digital Mouse Trap

Plenty of PC games rely on the mouse for input, and browser games are no exception. Unfortunately though, this isn’t always the most intuitive controller. [Nathan Ramanathan] combined a couple hacks to get the controller he wanted for playing browser games like Agar and Slither. No rodents were harmed in this project.

The games he wanted to dominate were top-down view so there was no need to move the mouse far from the center of the screen. For a more intuitive interface, a Wii nunchuck with its integrated joystick was selected. Nunchucks were notoriously hackable. An Arduino converted the nunchuck’s …read more

Continue reading Digital Mouse Trap

Cronk The Gonk Droid

The ‘Gonk’ droids from the Star Wars universe are easy to overlook, but serve the important function of mobile power generators. Here on Earth, [bithead942]’s life-size replica droid fulfills much the same purpose.

Cronk — functionally an oversized USB charging hub with a lot of bells and whistles — is remotely controlled by a modified Wii Nunchuck very controller similar to the one [bithead942] used to control his R2-D2. With the help of an Adafruit Audio FX Mini, an Adafruit Class D 20W amp, and two four-inch speakers, the droid can rattle off some sound effects as it blows off …read more

Continue reading Cronk The Gonk Droid

This Isn’t The R2-D2 Controller You’re Looking For

Who loves a good R2-D2 robot? Everyone, but especially young Star Wars fans who — frustratingly — have no problem spotting a controller and spoiling the illusion of an R2 unit brought to life. [Bithead942]’s concealed his R2-D2’s remote and re-establishes the illusion of an autonomous droid — no Jedi mind-tricks necessary.

[Bithead942] prefers to accompany his droid in traditional a Rebel Alliance pilot’s suit, so that gives him a bit of extra space under the jumpsuit to help conceal the controller. Dismantling a Frsky Taranis X9D controller, [Bithead942] meditated on how to use it while so concealed. In a …read more

Continue reading This Isn’t The R2-D2 Controller You’re Looking For

Wireless Nunchuck R/C Remote!

[Dan], admirably rose to the occasion when his son wanted a new toy. Being a dedicated father — and instead of buying something new — he took the opportunity to abscond to his workbench to convert a Wiimote Nunchuck into a fully wireless controller for his son’s old r/c car — itself, gutted and rebuilt some years earlier.

Unpacking the nunchuck and corralling the I2C wires was simply done. From there, he combined a bit of code, an Arduino pro mini, and two 1K Ohm resistors to make use of an Aurel RTX-MID transceiver that had been lying around. Waste …read more

Continue reading Wireless Nunchuck R/C Remote!