Makey Makey - Practical and Fun Computer Control
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,547 words · ~7 min read
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so what is the Makey Makey it's a simple circuit board it's an Arduino kind of
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it's a mouse it's a keyboard and honestly it's a ton of other stuff too
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still a little bit confused well stay tuned for the explanation but also open
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this video in another Tab and don't forget to subscribe to Channel Super Fun
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to see the crew playing Mario Counterstrike go and even a song with
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this little device
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experience silent performance with the new Cooler Master silencio 652 s
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minimalist design maximum compatibility click now to learn more so while we've
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obviously been playing with this thing for a while as you saw in that other video the purpose of this video is to
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give you a more in-depth view of how exactly the Makey Makey allowed us to do
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what we're doing and to plant some ideas in your mind for ways that it might be
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able to be used for fun or practical applications so the boring explanation
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of how this little guy works is that it facilitates the completion of a circuit
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through a signal and ground connection and then sends information based on the
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completion of said circuit over a USB to a computer which will then take that
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data as a keyboard or Mouse input and hopefully produce a result but boring
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explanations are well boring and the Mickey Micky is anything but that so
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what can you do with this thing well hopefully you've seen what we've done on the Channel Super Fun how do
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I what terrorist wow
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but that was just barely scratching the surface of its capabilities and there
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will probably be future Channel Super Fun videos dedicated to some of the
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awesome ideas we have floating around in the office there are already loads of
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videos of people playing music making vegetables scream when you cut them
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which is actually rather disturbing along with things like water pianos and
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interactive dance floors but the point of this video is to give you the 100t
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view of what this is from Hardware perspective so let's do a quick overview
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of the physical unit on one side you'll see the more simplistic view which has
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alligator clamp holes for the arrow keys up down left right along with space bar
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and left click amongst a neat circuit board design which features some cool
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hidden like gaming and music inspired art below this you have the Earth or
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Ground Bar this side can also be used without any fancy wiring by simply
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plugging the board into a computer over USB you can then hold a finger to the
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Earth area and tap any input that you would Desire with another finger to send
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that over to the computer and when you do this you'll even see a little LED
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light up so that you know it's working on the other more awesome side we have
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access to all the same alligator connectors that we used to but now
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through some jumper wire connectors we have even more access to ground
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connections WD f and g for keyboard
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inputs up down left left click and rightclick for Mouse movement and mouse
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input in general which is awesome that's quite a few inputs to to play with and a
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ton of fun and this is all we used in our Makey Makey video for the channel
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super fun but if you choose to follow the White Rabbit There's an opportunity
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to go deeper by installing an Arduino IDE also known as integrated development
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environment and grabbing the Makey Makey add-on from spark fun you can program
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your Makey miy similarly to an Arduino don't worry it's just some basic text
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editing you'll be okay this enables rebinding all of the inputs of the Makey
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Makey which in my opinion makes it way more usable for real world applications
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and by binding these inputs to something you seldom use like for myself maybe an
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F key you can get your keyboard's unused keys to do cool interesting functions
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I'm not going to spoil too many things that I might use on Channel Super Fun
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but one thing that I'll probably do anyways is a conductive punching bag why
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conductive punching bag well if you're getting frustrated with a game you could
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bind your F1 key to do an alt f4 macro
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and then if you get mad enough that you want to punch something you can punch
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the punching bag and it'll close the program for you last but not least
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there's a jumper wire connector at the top of these output connectors we're
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going to be focusing on D14 and D16 because they control output for keyboard
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and mouse respectively why would we need these output options well while you can
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do a lot hooked up your computer and that's pretty cool this thing will make
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the Makey Makey a lot more versatile now you can be more mobile with your
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inventions and Creations and you can have a much more integrated environment
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instead of being constantly hooked up to your computer unless that is your entire
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environment in which case feel feel free to carry on but if you do decide to take
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advantage of these output options you could do cool little things like hooking
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in an additional LED or much bigger things like home automation that I
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mentioned earlier and you can use it to act as like an event trigger for Motors
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or other self- powerered devices in conclusion this thing is pretty freaking
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cool and it seems like every time I even look at it I think of more awesome ways
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that I can put it to use It's relatively cheap and very easy for anyone to pick
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up due to its very wide skill range and
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can be used for a seemingly endless list of applications and it happens to be one
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of those cool opportunities where it's a toy but it happens to teach you things
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like in this case basic electronics and basic programming while you play with it
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in those future Channel Super Fun videos is there anything you guys want to see
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us try let us know in the comments down below or better yet let us know on the
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save on some awesome tools today all right guys don't forget to let me know in the comments down below or on the
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form what kind of stuff you want to see us do with the Makey Makey and if you
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want to see us do more kind of like little maker stuff do you want to see
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stuff on Arduino do you want to see stuff on uh like the flower board or any
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other kind of cool makery kind of things I would like to do that but need to know
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if what you guys think so let me know in those two different locations also down
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below this video if you check out the shirt link you can get a cool shirt
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which unfortunately isn't this one I have rice on my shirt that's
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awkward also you can like dislike uh the video whether or not you're wearing
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pants cuz you can't tell if I am or not and subscribe if you haven't done that
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already over on the Forum if you become a contributor you can get rid of those
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ads which aren't there yet but we'll be there soon and check out other cool
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things on the site including the hel lineus Media Group button which is in
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the top right hand corner or you can do stuff like change your Amazon link to
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give us a little Kickback whenever you shop on that site thank you guys for watching and see you next time