MakeyMakey Hammer Jam

I made a Whac-a-mole type game because I wanted to teach people better hand-eye coordination. This would be made for younger children who struggle with hand-eye coordination. They would have fun trying to get higher scores and not lose, and also gain better coordination while playing. The purpose is to teach kids how to visualize something and be able to respond to it.

Supplies:

Cardboard
Aluminum foil (conductor)
Paper (for color)
Makey Makey
Alligator Clips
Hot Glue Gun (Any connecting material like tape)

Building the Project

1. Take one big piece of cardboard and put your background paper color and glue it on top (This is the backboard for the project to sit on)

2. Take long and not too wide pieces of cardboard to roll into cyclical pipes

3. Once 4 cyclical pipes are cut out and glued together, glue it onto the backboard of the project so that the top part of the pipe is sticking up.

4. Then place aluminum foil in the top part of the pipe so that when someone slaps it, it can program the button to make the hammer in the game move.

5. Then cut out the holes in the back board below the hollow part of the pipes, this is where the alligator clips come to clip onto the aluminum foil and attach to the makey makey

6. Color the pipes with either glueing paper on it, or spray painting.

Programming Scratch

1. Create a sprite that represents a pipe and make four of them equally split through the screen

2. Add a hammer sprite and code it to move to a certain spot and rotate a certain distance and rotate back to its reset point

3. Add a mole/animal that will pop out of the pipe Code to randomly choose one pipe to come out of and have it glide up a distance and glide down a distance

4. You can also add a scoring system by the hammer touching the mole and add a certain amount of points

Attach Makey Makey

1. Clip the alligator clips to the buttons set on the scratch project (arrow keys)

2. Then make sure you have a place where the link to the makey makey is grounded

3. Connect the alligator clips to the pipes aluminum foil to create a place where electric input is gathered

Test/Troubleshoot

Make sure when you hit the pipe it triggers the hammer to move if not then troubleshoot the wires and make sure it's all connected

Final Project

The four buttons are the pipes that you click to move the hammer. The long foil is what you hold down to complete the circuit when you hit the pipes.