Banana Piano with Makey-Makey

Status: Complete

Contents

Introduction

This post is intended as a springboard to more research, designed to spark some inspiration rather than tell you all you need to know. The Makey-Makey is a piece of hardware that pretends to be (emulates) a keyboard. It will accept key presses from anything that is conductive.

The banana piano is often the first Makey-Makey project educators start with. It's really easy to achieve and gets young people's attention quickly.

If you manage to get hold of a Makey-Makey, please have a look here for setup and troubleshooting. Here's the project page for my version of the banana piano. Feel free to remix it!

Here's a link to the project page: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/2792530

This was the other project I made for a Makey-Makey: Potato Pong.

Materials & tools required for simple nodding harmonograph:

• 12mm ply sheet just over A3 size
• 18mm ply strip - approx 1000mm x 50mm
• Screw in hooks x 2
• String
• Steel metre ruler
• Pen or pencil


• Drill
• Saw
• Scewdriver


• Screws (M3 or M4 about 25-30mm)
• Nails for the axle and to hold weights
• Washers
• Fineliner or Sharpie


• 1kg weights x 2
• Small balance weights, ~50g x 4
• Peg or other way to hold the pen.