Day 1: What is the Makey Makey?

What Is Happening?!

How does this device work? What did you notice in the video about how this might be working?

Human circuit

Hold hands

When the last people touch, make a sound happen!

Human Drums

Everyone holds a different alligator clip connected to a Makey Makey key and I will play you as drums!

The Makey Makey has four different arrow keys on it to which you can connect alligator clips. When you touch Earth on the Makey Makey and one of these keys, it will make the computer think that you are pressing that key on the keyboard. If you computer is set to make sounds when you press keys, closing the circuit on the Makey Makey (holding Earth while touching a key) will make that sound happen!

I am holding the Earth alligator clip and you are holding one of the keys. When I touch your skin it completes, or closes, the circuit and the Makey Makey tells the computer you are touching the corresponding key.

Hooking It Up

In order to make the Makey Makey make different things happen on your computer, you need to connect conductive materials to the Makey Makey and you need to connect the Makey Makey to your laptop.

To connect to a key on the Makey Makey, use an alligator clip. Squeeze the clip to open it then clip it to the two holes on the Makey Makey for that key. Here I have connected an alligator clip to the Space key on the Makey Makey.

You need to complete a circuit for the Makey Makey to register a key press. That means you also need an alligator clip connected to one of the Earth connections on the bottom of the Makey Makey board. You need only one ground (or Earth) connections and you can use any set of holes.

In order for the Makey Makey to work properly you need to touch both the ground (or Earth) and the key that you want to trigger. You can leave your finger or hand on the ground all the time and then touch the key you want.

Plug the USB cable into the Makey Makey.

If your laptop has USB C you will need an adapter on the USB cable.

Then plug the USB cable into your laptop.

Is It Conductive?

You can connect conductive materials to the Makey Makey to act as buttons. If you are holding the Earth alligator clip and touch one of these conductive materials the Makey Makey will register a key press.

What is a conductive material? Well, any material that allows electricity to pass through it. Some materials are obvious, like the conductive copper tape, while others are a bit magical, as I will demonstrate.

https://apps.makeymakey.com/play/#is%20it%20conductive

• We will use this app to test all the materials we have on hand to see whether they are conductive