It’s no secret that we love old hardware here at Tom’s Hardware, and if you can shove a Raspberry Pi in it, we’re even more interested. Such is the case today with Adrian Papineau’s Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W-powered Wii nunchuck wireless mouse, a creation he calls the PiChuck. It’s battery-powered, and you can take it on the go for use as an input device for his wearable display glasses.
Papineau first created this project a few years ago but has been recently upgraded to use the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. According to Papineau, the joystick moves the cursor around while the buttons function as mouse clicks. As a result, it makes it possible for him to browse the internet and check the news while out and about on walks.
Papineau describes himself as a mechanical engineering tech and a general tech hobbyist. His experience shines in this project and his history of work covering things from custom mechanical keyboards to various 3D-printed designs available over at Thingiverse. This project combines his love of microelectronics and 3D printing with a custom shell made to fit the Pi Zero inside of a Wii nunchuck.
A fair bit of hardware is required to get this project off the ground, including a spare Wii nunchuck, a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, and a 3D printer for creating the mounting frame inside the hand grip. In addition, it needs an Adafruit Powerboost 1000 charger and a battery, in this case, a 750mAH 3.7V Holy Stone Model 752555, to make everything mobile. Finally, it uses an HDMI ribbon cable assembly to connect the Pi Zero nunchuck to his Vufine display.
It requires a few tools to get the Pi to read the signal from the Wii nunchuck joystick, specifically this library created by Boeeerb over at GitHub. The cursor control is Python-based and uses a module known as Pynput found over at PyPi.
If you want to recreate this Raspberry Pi project or get a better idea of how it all goes together, check out the original thread shared on Reddit and explore the project page at Thingiverse for an up-close look at the mounting hardware used to house the Pi.
