Now try leaving one finger on the Earth bar while quickly tapping the space
button. Getting a feel for it? It should work just like your standard space
key!
MaKey Key-Making Materials
To make your “standard” key with the MaKey MaKey you need the
following:
• A connection to a MaKey MaKey
input
. This can be done using
alligator clips on the top side, or jumper wires on the bottom.
• Connection to a MaKey MaKey
ground
(Earth). Again, you’ll connect
to earth using either alligator clips or jumper wires.
• Some sort of
key material
. This is the fun/creative part! There’s a
world of MaKey MaKey keys out there. Anything that’s even slightly
conductive is just waiting to become a computer input. The classics,
of course, are your fingers, bananas, and pencil scratchings.
• Something to
activate the key
, by connecting between the key
material and the ground input. Your fingers work pretty well for this.
Anything even slightly conductive will do though.
Making a Key
Activating a key means creating a closed circuit. For the circuit to work,
electrons have to be able to flow from the MaKey MaKey input key to
MaKey MaKey’s ground. Usually your fingers will be the missing link
between those two:
Let’s try making a bona fide MaKey MaKey key. First, you’ll need to find
some sort of key object. Dig around your house, check your fruit basket,
your coin purse, or grab a pencil and make a drawing.
Pick out your favorite-colored alligator clip cable, open one of the jaws, and
snap it down onto your key. And clip the other end of the clip into one of the
MaKey MaKey top-side inputs. SPACE is great for testing purposes:
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