Wooden Controller for Makey Makey

How to create a wooden controller for use with the Makey Makey

Makey Makey Classic, tape, conductive tape, alligator clips

I found a really nice square piece of wood from the hardware store in their discard pile.

Educator Tip:

A square piece might be best. Also for it to be made of solid wood.

I placed the Makey Makey at the top on the left of the board so that it might be easy to use conductive tape to connect to each of the 'Pads'

Educator Tip:

Doesn't really matter on the mounting location - just to think about the Makey Makey on the floor and protection for it.

Try to place the 'Pads' in a way that they are lined up - up and down and left and right. The 'Pads' are squares of double 'ply' aluminum foil. I used green painters tape to secure it to the board I left the top corner of the 'Pads' not taped for the connection to the Makey Makey.

Educator Tip:

Might leave the tape off on two sides until after the conductive tape is placed

Use the conductive tape to connect to the direction connectors on the Makey Makey. I placed the conductive tape under the aluminium foil Pads so that the connection was made and then placed tape over to ensure a constant connection.

When having the tape go from the pads to the Makey Makey unit, ensure that the conductive tape doesn't touch as this will create a connection and you might get errors when trying to code.

Educator Tip:

When connecting to the Makey Makey might have to connect from underneath the Makey Makey, the top or from different directions so might have to be use more tape to have an area be un-conductive so connections can be made.
This was needed to get the down pad to function as the easiest connection for the conductive tape was over the ground edge.

Using three or four alligator clips clipped together we can make an extra long ground connection so that the controller can be placed on the floor.

The next step is to program some projects for it. The projects are recommended to use the arrows to control your main sprite - similar to the example given here.

Educator Tip:

Projects can be 2D or 1D to control the sprite.

Create a second wooden controller and connect to the Makey Makey as the WASD (on the back of the board) for two player games.