MakerS as innovaTors Chapter 1 Say Hello to Makey Makey I magine there’s a new game you can’t wait to play on your computer You’re excited to sit down and start playing You load the game and get your fingers in position on the keyboard However you quickly notice that the keyboard isn’t working You can connect a Makey Makey to your computer and use it to control your keyboard 4
Makey Makey To fix it you try unplugging it and plugging it back in It still doesn’t work How will you play your game now Wouldn’t it be great if you could just use the stuff in the room around you to build a new controller Believe it or not this is totally possible You just need help from a device called a Makey Makey Makey Makey was created by Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum when they were students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Jay and Eric believe that everyone in the world is creative and imaginative enough to become an inventor They thought the only thing most people needed was an easy way to bring their ideas to life To help these people become inventors Jay and Eric created a simple kit called a Makey Makey At first it was expensive to make the Makey Makey kits Jay and Eric were only able to make a few of them They needed money to make more kits so others could buy them and start inventing In 2012 they used a Web site called Kickstarter to collect donations Eventually they gathered enough money and made many more kits You can now buy either an original Makey Makey or a keychain-sized Makey Makey GO to tinker with 5
MakerS as innovaTors All About Makers When they were working on Makey Makey Jay and Eric were inspired by makers Makers are people who tinker and make things with their hands That means you’re a maker too Makers can be people of all ages from 4 to 94 and beyond They are all about trying new things They use tools such as art supplies sewing machines computers wires and more to make their creations Most of all makers love to explore and use materials such as blocks of wood an old T-shirt or scraps of paper in unique and unexpected ways As Jay once said I don’t care that pencils are supposed to be used for writing I’m going to use them a different way What Is Makey Makey Makey Makey comes in two versions Classic and GO Classic is about the size of a business card GO can fit on a keychain and is the little sister of Classic In this book we’ll be focusing on the Classic version Both versions do the same thing They help you turn everyday objects into touchpads that control your computer’s keyboard To do this it relies on a small circuit board This small but mighty circuit board works as a microcontroller A microcontroller is a tiny computer that tells your main computer that you’d like to use other objects to control your keyboard You can’t plug a potato directly into your computer and 6
Makey Makey use it to control the computer But you could attach the potato to a Makey Makey circuit board and attach the board to the computer If you do this there’s a good chance you could control the computer using the potato The microcontroller doesn’t let just any object control the computer Instead it gives objects that can conduct electricity the ability to operate the comput er’s keyboard We’ll dive deeper into what this means later in the book The Makey Makey microcontroller has a simple layout that is easy to use 7
