Makey Makey Projects »

Looking for a bit of fun during the pandemic? Why not build a Skeeball table for your home?

I used the MakeyMakey to create my own Skeeball table, with some stuff I had around the house.

Supplies

Supplies needed.

A large, thick cardboard box, long rectangular. Mine was a box for a piece of flat pack furniture.
5 Solo Cups or papercup.
Copper foil tape
Aluminum foil
Masking Tape
Dowel or plastic rod. Wire Coat hanger may also work.
MakeyMakey
Marbles or Marble-sized steel ball bearings.

Tools needed.

Hot Glue gun
Exacto knife or other craft knife
Scissors

Step 1: Skeeball Table Structure.

I built mine from a recycled long rectangular cardboard box. Mine came from a flat-packed, assemble yourself, piece of furniture.

I started by cleaning up my box, so the top was removed, so I had a large, open box, like in the first picture.

I then scored the inside bottom of my box for a fold for the upright target area. See the second picture, and the captions on the image. See the the third image, to see the assembly.

Measure the inside of your upright top play area. From the top to the dowel, and left and right. This is the size of your target board. Trace your solo cups in your desired target configuration.

Cutting the targets out.

Do not cut to the traced position, but move inside of your traced lines by about 1/4". This is so that the solo cups do not fall into the target area, and can be glued later. Use your Exacto knife to cut the circles out.

Attach the Target board to the dowel with Masking tape.

Making your ramp

The ramp is another thick piece of cardboard that will fit inside of the bottom of your box, for most of the distance of your base. To make the curve for the ramp, See the 5th picture. Layout your lines on the back side of your cardboard you want to use for your ramp.

Spacers needed

I made my skeeball design, so that the marbles would have room to move under the ramp, and behind the targets. For this, I added a spacer at the top of the target board, and at the bottom of the ramp.

I also added a spacer under the bottom of the box, to add a slope to the bottom, so the marbles would roll to the end of the ramp.

My spacers are just stacks of scrap cardboard, masking taped together. See my video here to see where and how I used them.

Step 2: Creating Skeeball Switches

I made this video to better show how I created my skeeball switches.

Step 3: Wiring and Connecting to Makey Makey

The Video here shows the wiring process using Copper Tape.

Step 4: Programming in Scratch

I created my code to create sound effects and up the score as the sensors are hit. I could improve the code to end the game after a time variable counts down, change backgrounds after a certain score has been reached... lots of fun that could be had with making the project code different!

Each event of a keystroke, the UP arrow, DOWN arrow, RIGHT arrow, and LEFT arrow change the score, and play a sound effect on the computer.

Here is a link to my project code

The computer is connected to the MakeyMakey, and the MakeyMakey is connected to the wiring on the Skeeball table. The Scratch code needs to be open in a tab on the computer to run.