Showing posts with label Makey Makey. Show all posts

Day 7: Crashing. Makey Makey music keyboard

After about 6 days of working with Makey Makey, tinkering with Arduino and buying more and more electronic wires, switches, adapters, sensors, bridges, buzzers, now I sleep with my head of full of electronics.

Last night I could hardly slept, excited about the all the things I could possibly do with all those buttons, pins and wires.

Today I was sleep-walking, full of excuses of how I can excuse myself for a day. A day without makey makey or whatever.

I almost did. However a little voice also kept telling myself: how could I be sure tomorrow I won't be making more excuses and basically just throwing up the towel?

So I instead took upon an easy project. Making a music keyboard of sort using Makey Makey. The process is easy. I cut off a rectangle strip from my many amazon delivery box, taped long strips of almunimum foil for different keys, each with a different note. In the end I have a keyboard of 12 keys.

Time to play.



I spent the rest of the night binge-watching YouTube on how-tos and life hacks, including making a fire with lemon.
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Day 6: Music Stairs With Makey Makey and Scratch

I did it!

After the disaster from yesterday, I did some thinking and googling, found out a much better way to wire up my stairs.

No more easy-to-crumble bulky clumsy aluminum foil, or even aluminum tapes. Just copper wire tapes, alligator clips and lots of regular wires. Towards the end, I found that I can even do without alligator clips. Some good old wires are sufficient and less likely to stand in the little kids' jumping feet.

I set up the Scratch program, again a remix of some simple piano program. Ah, at this point, I have to say, I am totally into Scratch. Just to have the many many programs at my finger tips makes me grin.

My scratch remix is at here.

Scratch piano program made for Makey Makey

There are 8 keys, space, up, down, left, right and so on.

See how it works on youTube.



...

Have to admit, it is not too musical yet.

Let me try it again at another time.  Let's do something musical!
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Day 5: Failed attempt at making a piano stair case with Makey Makey

I got into Makey Makey because of a TED talk about Little Bits. Before I committed my 50+ dollars on Amazon on a Little Bits kit (it is about 100 dollars on Little Bits website), I spotted Makey Makey where it has far more favorite reviews. I ended up buying both the Makey Makey and the Little Bits kit (I returned Little Bits the hour it arrived, because I found some problems with the battery).

I also watched the Makey Makey promo video. I was extremely impressed with their piano stairs. I wanted to build one.

That was what i did tonight. I started by modifying a Scratch Piano program so that I can have 12 keys instead of 4 keys. I proceeded to lay aluminum foils on the stair case. The big obstacle I was trying to overcome was not have to have people hold on to a wire to be part of circuit, at least they do not have to be tethered walking up and down. I tried to lay one continuous ground wire next to each of the piano key wire.

It did  not work.

At the end of it, I only have some giant balls of aluminum foils to show. 
Failed attempt at building a piano stair case. Tin foil carcass and sad wires
Have to come back tomorrow
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Day 3: Hook up Scratch Pong game with Makey Makey



So the Scratch game is done, it is time to hook up with Makey Makey.

Compared to computer, Makey Makey makes it easier to have multiple players; easier to use pretty much anything else other than the keyboard. I could have just use bananas. It might even be entertaining watching users brandishing bananas like maniacs.

So points go to Makey Makey.

However, Makey Makey is also clumsy. Problem 1: the wires can constantly fall off; Problem 2: you are forever tangled and tethered; Problem 3: You could start to notice that computer is acting strangely, only to find out that Makey Makey is inadvertently controlling a couple of keys.

Nevertheless, I got to hook up my pong game.

I decided to use real ping pong paddles. To make it conductive, I wrapped the padding surface with foil. I decided against real ping pong, because it is too light. Instead I used potatoes wrapped in aluminum foil.

So I ended up with some shinny paddles and silver goose eggs. Looking good. I hooked the ground to the paddles, and the eggs to the left and right arrows.

The game is ready.


It is playable. Though no real ping pong motion can be simulated. I do not think Makey Makey is capable of that, or I am capable of programming that. Instead, the kids just sort of banging the ball on the paddle.

After a while, it gets boring.

Oh well, despite all of its flaws, I liked it.
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Day 2: Scratch for Makey Makey

I always have a lot of reservation and frustration with Scratch. Part of it is probably because of the inner snob of me. As a programmer who codes for a living, I am impatient with drag-and-drop variables, operators, if-else, all that.

I have started and stopped learning Scratch quite a few times, each time I learned a bit more, then dropped because I cannot easy write a dynamic text to screen, or I stumbled on making a semi-presentable characters.

However Scratch just keeps growing and growing, in reputation, user communities, the number of jaw-dropping little projects.

No matter what I think of Scratch, it absolutely delightfully poses a lower barrier for entering the coding territory.

Now there are many many big players are in this kids coding / tech territory, attacking from different angles. Snap-together coding toys, graphic coding languages, yearly hour-of-code with a lot of celebrities and videos.

Scratch is one of them. Makey Makey is another.

So I wanted to go back to Scratch, and coded for Makey Makey, where games can be played by multiple players simultaneously, can be played just by tapping some foot pad, or banging on some spoons, or stabbing on playdohs.

Ping-pong came to my mind.

Luckily there are also quite some ping-pong projects available in Scratch already. So I took one. Remix is easier than doing it from "Scratch".

I remixed from a humorous Ping Pong (Ft. WO997) W0997 ping pong autoplay, throwing out all of the inevitable drama and swaggering and remade it so it can be played by 2 player.

The following is the end result. Maybe I will convert it a JavaScript game.

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Day 1: Jingle Bell with Makey Makey, a rolling grape and an orange

Today has been a busy day. I was almost making excuses not doing anything and making plans to make up for it tomorrow.

But tomorrow is Friday, it might be harder.

But Makey, Makey can be really easy and entertaining.

So i quickly searched for some ideas.

Makey makey belongs to the domain of music, I can say 70% of the projects are music related. The rest? Games. (Playing games with Makey Makey can be challenging though, since you are like a wired up monkey that often lose track of keys.)

I took the easy route and quickly hooked up the wires, makey-makey piano web page, and started banging the "Piano". Luckily, Emma truly knows music. With 4 keys, she managed to play Jing Bell.

So here it is: Jing Bell With Makey Makey, a rolling grape and orange.

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Why the heck I want to torture myself




Hello, Blogger, my old friend.

On again, off again. 

Read a bunch, many bunches. However not much to pour out. Even in private.

Writing code is easier, as long as you have a plan. You just find the steps to execute that plan, step by step. You can generally succeed before your code becomes a mess of a hairball.

Writing code is really easier. Every time you have a question, you hit search, you found a dozen of posts, stackoverflow, You Tube, clamoring for your attention. 

When you code, copying and pasting is never a problem, as long as you understand what you are copying and pasting. When copying and pasting become too greater a need, you get a library. Import. Ha.

With writing, it is plagiarism.

Anyway, I still wanted to write. At least, at this moment. Midnight. 12am. 

I wanted to make myself a challenge, since I watched that google guy Matt something spoke on Ted about taking a 30 day challenge. 

So why not?

1) I have to infest my limited coding capacity to my little kids
2) Writing code is generally boring for business. 
3) I just bought Makey-Makey (or Wakey-Wakey) and wanted to do cool things
4) I have to educate myself to be fluent in this de-facto coding language Scratch. 

This is my challenge:

For the next 30 days:

1) Everyday write some code in Scratch
2) Everyday tinker a little bit with my electronic tools, makey makey or arduino
3) Everyday write about it, at the very least, throw some pictures or videos if writing is too arduous. 

At the end of the 30 days:

1) Has some makey-makey projects to show off on YouTube
2) Has some electronic projects to show off on YouTube
3) Have 2-5 scratch projects completed

Let's get the ball rolling.
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