Makey Makey Projects »

This is a simple project in which the goal is to make a marble maze with sensors made of tin foil.

The supplies are very simple and most of them you can find around the house.

Supplies

The supplies are:

Sissors or a box cutter
liquid nails glue or superglue
coorugated cardboard
a makey makey kit
a laptop with internet connection and web browser

Step 1: Cut Out the Base

Cut out a piece of cardboard 1 ft by 1 ft using a box cutter or scissors.

Then cut four 1 in by 12 in strips of cardboard and glue them onto the base like in the picture using liquid nails or superglue as in the picture.

Step 2: Design the Maze

Take the piece of blank paper and draw a maze design with sharpi or pencil.

Then transfer the design onto the cardboard in light pencil so that you can make changes if needed.

Make sure that you plan out 3 "red zones" a start and finish. Make changes to your original design if you want to and you can copy my design on the picture as well.

Step 3: Build the Maze

Cut out strips of cardboard 1in wide. make then cut them to the right lengths to match your maze design on the cardboard. for my design the lengths were : 10,10,2,2,4,9 (in inches) then glue the pieces onto the right spots on the base. I found that liquid nails worked well. make sure to make the maze challenging and make the red zones hard to avoid and make a start and end. The rest you can decide.

Step 4: (Optional) Make Color Coded Sensors

If you want to you can take colored construction paper and cut it to fit the design you have already drawn in the places you want sensors. I color coded the "red zones" red and the finish green. Once you are done it should look similar to the first picture.

Step 5: Make the Real Sensors

After that cut long strips of aluminum foil about 1 and 1/2 inches wide and fold them a few times to make them about 1cm wide. Then cut two holes with a hobby knife large enough to put the strips through. then glue the strips down like in the picture and make sure that at least 1 cm is sticking out the bottom through the holes you cut. After you do this it should look similar to the picture on the bottom.

Step 6: Make or Grab a Metal Marble

If you have a metal marble then just use that but if you do not (like me) you can make one! Just cut a large square of aluminum foil and crumple it into a ball and if it is not big enough then just ad more foil. once you are done it should be about 1 and 1/2 cm in diameter but if it is bigger that is fine.

Step 7: Wire the Sensors

Almost there! For each sensor you need to connect a alligator clip to to one strip of foil and then attach it to a ground hole. Then take another alligator clip and attach it to the other foil strip and then to either an arrow key for a ''red zone" or the space key hole for the finish repeat 3 more times to finish. I only had 7 alligator clips and I needed 8 because its 2 clips per button ,so I used a connector wire as the 8th one.(as in picture)

Step 8:

Last step! If you do not have a scratch account then go to "scratch.mit.edu" and create an account . Then create a new project and make a new sprite . Then copy the code blocks in the picture above and then make 2 costumes for the sprite. 1 that says you win! and one that says you lose. What this code does is make it so that if you get to the end then it says you win but if you touch the red zones it says you loose.

Now you are done! Go ahead and plug the makey makey in and try it out,if it does not work then try making a bigger marble so that it can touch the two foil strips and trigger the sensor. Feel free to get creative! Another idea would be to add sound to the code or make it beep if you loose. You could also make the maze bigger! The possibilities are endless!