Now, grab a second cable for the ground connection. Black is the classic
“ground color”, but set your own trend and pick whatever you want. Clip one
end of one cable into the Earth bar, and let the other end dangle for now.
Open up some sort of
text editor
(Notepad, Word, TextEdit, etc.) on your
computer. Remember that, just as with your boring ol' keyboard, your
computer will interpret keypresses differently depending on what program is
active.
Finally! Grab the dangling end of the ground cable with one hand. Make
sure you’re touching the metal part of the clip. Then use your other hand to
touch the banana, or whatever your key might be. BAM! Space!
Adding More Keys, Using the Back
To add more keys, simply connect another alligator clip to another MaKey
MaKey input (e.g. arrow keys or mouse click), and connect the other end to
a key material. No further ground connections are necessary.
Want to make use of the back side of the board? You can follow a similar
set of steps, replacing alligator cables with
jumper wires
. Jumper wires are
a bit tougher to connect to keys. An easy solution is to connect an alligator
cable to the free end of the jumper.
Play-doh, or other materials which enable you to jab the jumper wire in also
work great! How about a Play-doh Mouse:
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