{"id":1168,"date":"2013-03-11T20:37:49","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T19:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ellentriek.net\/?p=1168"},"modified":"2013-03-11T20:40:07","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T19:40:07","slug":"makeymakey-versions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ellentriek.net\/makeymakey-versions\/","title":{"rendered":"MakeyMakey – versions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Makey Makey<\/a> is a nice and fun Open Hardware project, developed by Mit researchers Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum.\u00a0 It’s an Arduino based project that could get started through crowdfunding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Basically you can turn any conductive surface into a sensor: bananas and other fruit\/vegetables, cutlery, water, metal tools, conductive dough, human skin…When you connect to the ground, you trigger certain parts of your keyboard: the arrow keys, space bar and the left click of the mouse.<\/p>\n

“Using the MaKey MaKey you can make <\/em>anything into a key<\/em> (get it?) just by connecting a few alligator clips. The MaKey MaKey is an invention kit that tricks your computer into thinking that almost anything is a keyboard. This allows you to hook up all kinds of fun things as an input. For example, play Mario with a Play-Doh keyboard, or piano with fruit!<\/p>\n

The MaKey MaKey uses high resistance switching to detect when you’ve made a connection even through materials that aren’t very conductive (like leaves, pasta or people). This technique attracts noise on the input, so a moving window averager is used to lowpass the noise. The on-board ATMega32u4 communicates with your computer using the Human Interface Device (HID) protocol which means that it can act like a keyboard or mouse.” [Via Sparkfun<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The explanation sounds harder than it is – have a look at some video’s of MakeyMakey in action and you will see what it can do.<\/p>\n

As this is an Arduino based controller, we wanted to have a look inside. How legible\/reproducible is Makey Makey?<\/p>\n

—-> Answer, quite legible, if you have some knowledge of pcb’s, coding and microcontrollers.<\/p>\n

—> All online:<\/p>\n

– Schematic<\/a>
\n– Eagle Files<\/a>
\n– Github Home<\/a> (Find the latest MaKey MaKey sketch here)
\n– Getting Started Guide<\/a>
\n– MaKey MaKey Driver<\/a> (For Windows users)
\n– MaKey MaKey Arduino Addon<\/a> (Unzip to your Arduino sketchbook directory)
\n– MaKey MaKey Site<\/a>
\n– Firmware Note<\/a><\/p>\n

We wanted to check this out for ourselves and we got an Arduino Leonardo<\/a> (only this model works with your computer using the Human Interface Device (HID) protocol) and six 20MegaOhm resistors (that’s a lot of Ohm!).<\/p>\n

Success! Here’s how to make your own version (here is the\u00a0subtitle zip<\/a>\u00a0 file)<\/p>\n