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.
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
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.
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.
