Introduction: Easy Makey Makey & Scratch

This is my first instructable! I am going to explain how to integrate Scratch (programming language) with Makey Makey, I will make a cat Meow and walk in an easy to follow steps.

The best practice I use, is to do all the programming in Scratch then change it to Makey Makey. I hope this will help you with your projects.

Supplies

  • Scratch
  • Makey Makey

Step 1: Let Us Get Scratch

  • You can work with Scratch online. You don't need to join Scratch and have an account to start creating, just hit "Start Creating" and you are ready to start. Make sure to save your project into your computer, otherwise you will loose it.
  • Or you can work offline by downloading Scratch. I prefer the offline version because I don't have reliable Internet connection. Scratch is available for Windows, Mac, ChromeOS and Android.

Step 2: Setting Up the Stage

Sprite: The default sprite used in Scratch is the lovely cat !

You can change this by selecting a new sprite, click the cat face to the right lower corner and choose

  • The library (click Choose a Sprite)
  • Draw your own (click Paint)
  • Upload one from your computer (Upload Sprite).

I am going to stay with the cat.

Background: You can choose different backgrounds from the library, draw your own or upload from your computer.

I will choose from the library the "Colourful City" background.

Step 3: Let's Make the Cat Say Hello!

Now, let's make our cat say something. You need to make sure that you are selecting the cat sprite before placing your code.

Drag a "When space key pressed" block from Events, and a "Say Hello for 2 sec" block from Looks to your workspace. What this will do is that it will make the cat say hello for 2 seconds.

Note that you can change the phrase and the time duration as you like.

Step 4: Give Your Cat a Sound

Drag a "Play sound until done" block from sound and place it before the "Say hello" block. You can change the sounds by going to the "Sounds" tab, you can even record your sound!

Step 5: Let's Walk in the City

It gets a little bit tricky here. Don't worry !

Let's get back to math for a second, we have two axis. X axis is the horizontal and Y axis is the vertical. If we go to right from the zero on the X axis, it will increase X (Positive X). If we go to the left of zero, it will decrease X (Negative X). The same will apply to our cat! if we want it to go to the right then we move it by a positive step and if we want it to go to the left, we move it by negative step.

To do this:

Drag two "When space key pressed" blocks to your workspace, to change the space to the arrow keys (right and left) press the drop down menu and select accordingly. Attach a "Move 10 steps" to the "When right key pressed" and "Move -10 steps" to the "When left key pressed", you can find the move step block in Motion. Now, change the 10 steps to 5, we don't want it to be super fast.

Does it look like walking? Apparently not! in order to fix that, you need one more step. Drag "Next Costume" block from looks and place it before the move steps block to make your cat looks like walking, try it on!

Step 6: Finally Makey Makey

All what you need now is to connect your Makey Makey. You need to use the space, right arrow and left arrow in your Makey Makey.

To Programm it in Scratch, add the Makey Makey extension and you will see new blocks appear. Replace the "When space key pressed", "When right arrow key pressed" and "When left arrow key pressed" with the ones from Makey Makey blocks. Enjoy!

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