Makey Makey
Makey Makey is an invention kit designed by Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum under the advising of Mitch Resnick of the MIT Media Lab. This kit allows you, with some coding, to make just about anything into a key (hence the name: Ma Key, or make a key).
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- Learn
The Makey Makey
You can purchase the original Makey Makey kit directly from the creator (as well as via SparkFun and Amazon). The original kit includes the board (which looks like an old Nintendo gamepad), a set of alligator clip wires, some jumper wires, a USB to micro USB power cable to connect the Makey Makey to your computer, along with some stickers and directions. You can also purchase the newer Makey Makey Go (a single button version).
Use the Makey Makey
Your alligator clip wires can be used to clip to the board and to an external object (such as a banana, a tack, or even a person)
The jumper wires can be used to access the header pins on the back of the board and then connected to an alligator clip.
The Makey Makey works via basic circuitry. You connect an alligator clip (or wire) to one control and another to the ground (or earth). For example, one alligator clip could be connected to the up arrow and a banana. A person can hold the end of an alligator clip connected to the ground (or earth) and it will trigger the computer to sense that the up arrow was clicked. Using the front of the board, you have access to the following keys: "up arrow," "down arrow," "left arrow," "right arrow," and "space bar" (you also have access to a mouse click, but that may not be as useful for musical tinkering applications). You also have access to a ground (earth) bar at the bottom of the board.
The back of the Makey Makey board allows for more options via the headers (shown in the circles). The letter headers (green circle) allow you to have access to the following keys: "W," "A," "S," "D," "F," and "G." The ground (earth) headers (yellow circle) gives you more spaces for grounds. The mouse headers (blue circle) allows you to control your mouse. To use the headers, you will need to use the jumper wires.
Learn
The Makey Makey is a useful tool to explore circuitry, instrument/controller design, and coding--when combined with Scratch. The best way to learn is to play around. We provide a few tutorial and demonstration videos below for your convience.