How to hook up a Wii Nunchuk to an Arduino Mega

When I first tried to hook up my Wii Nunchuk to an Arduino board, I only got errors. I tried several tutorials, but nothing happened. I had bought an used Wii Nunchuk for this purpose, so I feared that it was broken and that I had been scammed. Just before giving up, I realized what the problem was: I was using an Arduino Mega, but all the tutorials were intended for Arduino UNOs. When I finally managed to get it working, I decided to write a guide on how to hook up the Wii Nunchuk to an Arduino Mega.

I also noted that adapters are not necessary. I bought two different adapters, but then I realized that it is possible to connect jumper wires directly to the controller’s connector (without cutting the wire). The following images shows how you can insert wires into the connector.

The connector has six holes, but only four will be used: power (+), ground (-), I2C data (d), and I2C clock (c). The following image shows which hole corresponds to each function.

Now you should connect it to your Arduino board as follows:

  • + to +3.3V
  • - to GND
  • d to SDA (pin 20)
  • c to SCL (pin 21)

The final setup should look like:

Your Wii Nunchuk is now ready to be used with your Arduino Mega.

If you still need a library to interface it, be sure to check my Arduino Nunchuk library. It works both with UNO and Mega boards (and probably with other newer models too).

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PLUGB: The End of PLUGB

Almost one year ago, I launched a flash games website called PLUGB. After marketing it, I managed to get more than 1000 visitors daily on PLUGB. Everything seemed fine… until the school vacations in the US started.

PlugB - Play Free Flash Games On December 17, 2010 (the last day before the vacations), PLUGB received 1442 visitors, its record. During the vacations, it received about 100 visitors daily. That was a huge traffic drop. I thought, however, that it would recover when the vacations ended. However, the visits were back to about 800-1000 visitors for one week and then started falling again. On February, it was getting only 200-300 visitors per day. Since then, the highest amount of visitors was 588 on April. You can see our visitors since the beginning here:

But why is this the end of PLUGB? Because I sold it. The new owner is Italos from Italos Media, who also owns many other flash games websites, like GameSting. So, after one year since I started developing PLUGB, it’s over for me. But it is a new era for Italos.

This doesn’t mean that I won’t be doing anything anymore. I’m already working on a new project and I’ll surely work on many others. I’ve already coded flash games, websites and some Python applications. The next step is (probably) a Facebook App, about which I’ll write soon.

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PLUGB: Over 1000 Visits a Day

Five months ago, I created a flash games website called PLUGB. And yesterday, it broke its record and received more than 1000 visits (1172 to be exact). This is a great milestone for the website.

PlugB - Play Free Flash Games

The number of visitors has been raising, especially during the last two months. Most of our traffic is from the US & UK (more than 80% combined). The bounce rate is about 20%-25%, which I consider good. About 90% of the visits that go to the home page play a game. This means that the website is attractive. The main source of traffic is search engines, but there are many direct visitors too. Many searches are for “plugb” or “plugb games”. When I launched the website, if you searched for “plugb”, Google would say “Did you mean: plugbr” (Brazilian computer parts store). However, Google doesn’t correct the searches anymore. Google has also added some site-links to the results page.

Regarding monetization, I am earning a more than $1 daily using BannerFlux. I like this ad network. The CPC is fairly good for this niche and all ads are game-related, generating a good CTR. If you own an arcade website or similar website, I suggest checking them out. I have also done one private ad sale so far, for $0.30 CPM. I am looking for other advertisers with the same (or better) rate.

So far, my results with PLUGB have been good. I hope that it continues growing.

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PLUGB: Official Launch

PLUGB I’ve always wanted to create a popular website. I’ve had many ideas, most of which failed or were forgotten. However, the idea of creating an arcade website always stayed in my mind. I finally decided to put this idea into practice and create a website filled with flash games.

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