The Makey Makey electronic kit, based on Arduino, allows kids (and older kids :)) to make, in 5 mn and 3 lines of code, funny experiments like transforming a banana, a glass of water or your friends in computer interfaces that can trigger music or control a video game: http://www.makeymakey.com
It appears that it is straightforward to use it with Poppy: e.g. in 3 lines of code and 5 mn of tinkering, one can design a piano made with bananas and oranges which Poppy can play.
The principle is simple: you connect the car through USB on the computer, it emulates a keyboard and a mouse. Then you connect individual wires to each conductor object (e.g. a fruit or a glass of water) you want to use as emulating a key press or a mouse movement, and one wire to the hand of Poppy. Then Poppy touching a banana sends a “b” key press event to the computer which you can catch as you wish
This is very interesting and it reminds me the video below (I don’t remember who sent me this one, probably an active member of this forum …).
I didn’t find an english version of it but anyway, what the guy is saying is not very interesting (sometimes funny though, or even creepy). The musical part begins at 3:10.
Yes, sausages work, as well as many other materials. Actually, through using conductive painting, one can transform any materials, including the skeleton of Poppy and clothes,
into conductive material: http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=634
What is opens as a possibility with Poppy is to make various parts of its skeleton sensitive to touch with the Makey Makey, i.e. a sort of SKIN for Poppy
One can imagine connecting the Makey Makey wires to for e.g. forearm, shoulder, head, legs, and then you can either:
make the part of the body compliant as soon as you touch it (like
the Baxter, but even more sensitive)
have Poppy giggling when you tickle it
have Poppy be a musical instrument (producing various
sounds depending where you touch it)
Makey Makey is a tool that could be used to implement simple and cheap touchable skin for Poppy.
The following video shows how to use 2 Makey Makeys to transform a sheet of paper into a musical instrument with many notes.
Imagine you fold the sheets into a skin, and music keys become an array of skin sensors: http://web.media.mit.edu/~ericr/musical-paintings.php
Hi, I’m discovering Poppy’s project for a month in Cap Sciences @Bordeaux. Anyone can help me please to introduce the possibility to use makey makey with poppy, specially to poppy ergo ! Thanks to everybody.
PM
Hi @pierre_mary_gimenez
you can right away use the Makey Makey with Poppy: e.g. just plug it in your computer, and put the base wire in your hand, then connect the other wires to e.g. fruits. When you touch a fruit, it sends a keyboard event to the computer (= it is exactly the same as if you would type a key on your keyboard, e.g. upper arrow).
Then, in Snap! or Python, you can use this by introducing test on key event presses (e.g. if “Key upper arrow” is pressed, then move motor M to value V").
