Introduction: Makey Makey Two Button Challenge

By www.alwayscomputing.co.uk
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Use your Makey Makey and some Arcade buttons to create a cool and interesting challenge for your pupils.

You'll need:

  • An old card box
  • a Makey Makey set including crocodile clips
  • 2 Arcade Buttons
  • Marker pens

Step 1: Building

This build is stupidly easy, so here it is.

Take your box, and add 3 small holes to it. Two on top for your arcade buttons to slide in to, and a third on the back for your power wire.

Tip: Make sure the holes for the button are SMALLER than you think. They should be tight on the button so they don't slip out.

Then you can take your markers and label them up! Make it beautiful!

Step 2: Connecting

Next, you need to hook up your Makey Makey to the arcade buttons.

As you can see in the picture, each button has 2 connections. On each button one of the connectors should go to the Earth section of your Makey, while the other should go to a direction point. I've used Up and Down, but it's up to you!

Tip: Make sure your crocodile clips are only touching ONE of the connection points and not both! If they touch both they'll trigger the buttons by themselves!

Step 3: Playing!

That's it for the build. Now to plug it in to your computer and play with it!

Challenge your pupils to create and code the most interesting thing you can think of on Scratch using only two buttons! It's so simple that it's actually really difficult! Only two buttons is HARD!

In my example we used Scratch to make rangoli style patterns, with the 2 buttons controlling the movements. You might want to make a game with it, or use it to make sound effects!

Have fun with it!