I have year 5/6 students coding virtual musical instruments and creating devices to play them with the MaKey MaKey. One very advanced student is trying to make something similar to [this banana 88-key piano.]( 88 Key Banana Piano With Makey Makey - Instructableshttps://www.instructables.com › Teachers › Grades 3-5)
His coding works fine, and he can play all 88 notes of the piano using 2 key presses for each note (e.g. middle C is 3A. He has remapped the MaKey MaKey according to these instructions.
We can’t figure out how to wire the hubs. Basically the down arrow has been remapped to 3, but that needs to operate C, D and E so he has them connected with a paper clip as the hub, but obviously that is conducting current so they are sounding simultaneously. There is a picture on the MM site using spoons as hubs but the wiring is not detailed so we can’t figure it out. Here is his drawing of how it is currently set up.
A helpful person on the FB MM group said:
You just wire two separate keys and Scratch will have to read that you pressed two keys. It’s a bit finicky to be honest!
but I’m not sure physically what that means. Any help at all would be appreciated. Thank you.
Thanks for your phone call today regarding this and for the very detailed post, that helps significantly.
I am going to take a stab here and suggest as I am not familiar with Makey Makey but I would love to try and stumble upon the right answer with some testing, hoping that in the meantime someone with more knowledge may be able to chime in (I know you need this fixed in the next couple of days).
Firstly based on the instructables tutorial it appears that your wiring is incorrect. The Hubs are simply conductive inputs that are wired to the extra inputs on the Makey Makey, and do not need to be wired together. For example C only needs to be wired directly to the C input on the Makey Makey, and not to the other keys or the 3 (down) key. A paper clip as you suggested would be great for this, but again just needs to be wired directly to the C input and nothing else.
So the suggestion from the FB MM group user sounds good and fits with the instructables tutorial best. They are simply saying that you should wire your hubs individually rather than to multiple inputs, as per the instructables tutorial. That means your C, D, E, F, G keys need to be wired separately (not linked together as you have now) to their own individual Makey Makey inputs, using the spare inputs on the back of the Makey Makey.
Was there a reason the 3 key was wired to C, D and E as well? It does not need to wired to these keys as well from my reading. The programming will know when two separate keys are pressed
Hi Priscilla
I don’t profess to know anything about the details of what you are trying to do. But how the hell do you make a hub out of a paper clip and spoons. Doesn’t even warrant investigation I don’t think. You may as well just join all the wires together as that is what appears to be happening.
Cheers Bob
The Makey Makey is an educational product that is used to turn regular household items or fruit for example into keys to use as simple inputs. In this case, the project is to create an 88 key piano using bananas and spoons for keys and simple tones as the output. Just a fun way to get kids into electronics
Hi Matt
Ha that is a bit different. I have heard slightly of Makey Makey but have never looked into it. Explains the spoons but to use them as a hub???
Will worry no more and to Priscilla my apologies if I have been in any way offensive.
Cheers Bob
I believe the term ‘hub’ is used a little differently with this product. They are essentially just conductive items that can be used like a capacitive touch sensor to activate an input. Again though still learning about the product myself!
The term is used in the Instructables tutorial Priscilla is following here which might shed some more light on it’s usage:
Thanks everyone for your help. In the end I suggested what is possibly more of a workaround than a solution. He’s wired it as per the photo below, then he would have to connect each key separately if he wanted to have one key press for each note. I think the sheer number and length of wires make that impractical for our purposes, so he is just using the 2 key presses for each note for now. Massive learning curve at the end of a hard year for this tired teacher! I really appreciate everyone’s contributions, thank you.
