How to make a Banana Piano with MaKey Makey

How to make a Banana Piano with MaKey Makey

Intro

A great and fun starter project for using a MaKey MaKey is to use different objects to replace the computer keyboard buttons to play a virtual piano. There’s an online piano keyboard we can use available on the MaKey MaKey website. In this example, we’ll use bananas as our piano keys.

What you need

  • MaKey MaKey (including Mini-B USB Cable)
  • Six bananas
  • Alligator clips
  • Computer

How

  • Connect MaKey MaKey to your computer using USB cable. Plug the small side of USB cable into MaKey MaKey and the big side into your computer. (If your computer asks you to install the drivers, simply click cancel or close the window.)

  • Open this link on your browser http://makeymakey.com/piano/ to access a piano keyboard designed specifically for MaKey MaKey. Click on it and play using your computer keyboard’s arrows, space and click.

  • Connect to Earth. Now you can connect one end of an alligator clip to the bottom of MaKey MaKey which is marked as “Earth”.

  • Connect to Yourself. Then you hold the other end of the alligator clip (the metal part) between your fingers, and now you become “grounded”.

  • Connect MaKey MaKey to bananas. If you want bananas become your piano keys you simply connect them to your MaKey MaKey with the help of alligator clips. On the front side of MaKey MaKey you find four arrows, space and click. Connect each of them to a banana. Now you can play a melody with your banana piano.

Banana Keyboard with MaKey MaKey

More info

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