Turn anything into a videogame controller, even a banana

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joylabs/makey-makey-an-invention-kit-for-everyone

209 25 14 years ago

mrjd• 14 years ago

I think it's a great idea. They're making electronics fun and interesting which will hopefully attract people that would otherwise run a mile! Good luck guys!

Impossible• 14 years ago

Looks like a great gateway project. You can start using it to make simple custom controllers, but it's also a fully programmable Arduino with everything that comes with that. Really cool project and great price point.

debacle• 14 years ago

I can think of a thousand cool things you could use this for, outside of a keyboard. It takes the controller abstraction up one level, making it accessible to magnitudes more people. With this + a raspberry pi, the sky is the limit.

jeffpersonified• 14 years ago

It's interesting that both this and raspberry pi's intent are to be educational in nature. And fun at that.

K2h2• 14 years ago

The collaboration with SparkFun (a well recognized and respected group) was a very good choice.

verganileonardo2• 14 years ago

Have you worked with SparkFun before?

dkersten2• 14 years ago

No idea what they're like to work with, but I happily buy from them regularly (even though you can get a lot of the stuff slightly cheaper elsewhere).

K2h2• 14 years ago

nope, but i have a lot of respect for how they run their business. the only experience i have is when i asked them to add a product, and they were very professional.

follower• 14 years ago

Did you have a particular reason for asking this question? :)

ahuibers• 14 years ago

Even though I can program an Arduino just fine, this is so low-friction that it will encourage me do short projects and experiments I otherwise might not.

vibragiel• 14 years ago

Just look at this banana game controller!

Roboprog• 14 years ago

Is there an accompanying karate game, so that you, like Woody Allen, can beat a man senseless with a banana? (Sleeper)

Looks like a fun way to make familiar, intuitive controls for your friends.

rosstafarian• 14 years ago

I as a software hacker/tinkerer I have been wanting to get into hardware hacking for quite a while and this looks like a perfect starting point "kit" to play with, with the perfect price.

Thank you for making the world a bit more interesting :)

nemo1618• 14 years ago

The first thing I thought of was CamSpace: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/control-any-game-with-your-webc...

I remember using it a few years ago and it seemed pretty buggy (though maybe it was just my low quality webcam). This seems like it has a lot more potential.

tnorthcutt• 14 years ago

This looks awesome.

That said, it seems like they already have production figured out, all the research done, etc. Why not just sell the product, instead of running a Kickstarter campaign? Is this just functioning as a pre-order, so they can make a big batch of them?

verganileonardo2• 14 years ago

Big batch will make the average production cost go down.

"If we raise $25,000 then we can do a large first run, which brings the retail cost down significantly, so that we can sell the kit to you for $35 (including shipping)."

dkersten2• 14 years ago

Is this just functioning as a pre-order, so they can make a big batch of them?

I assume a lot of the Kickstarter projects (certainly most hardware ones) are exactly that.

hsshah• 14 years ago

Very creative indeed. I have been using Picoboard (http://www.picocricket.com/picoboard.html) for teaching with Scratch. This gives so many ideas for the resistance sensors. Awesome job guys. Will back you up.

tbundy• 14 years ago

What a delight. I look forward to playing GTA with a cheese controller.

apitaru• 14 years ago

This project has tremendous potential for children with special needs. I've basically had to build a similar device from scratch in 2006 as part of my ITP (NYU) thesis project [1]. This could have saved me so much time! Backing it, and hope you will too!

[1] http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/dmal.9780262...

userdeveloper• 14 years ago

This is what I call "user interface".

Will it be possible to modify this to work with other OS's such as BSD, GNU/Linux, Solaris, etc.?

gorloth• 14 years ago

The microcontroller being used can be setup to appear as a standard USB mouse/keyboard, so this should work with anything that supports a USB keyboard and mouse.

malkia• 14 years ago

I call this INPUTATION, and the device INPUTIZER!

silentscope• 14 years ago

banana phone???

sweetdreamerit• 14 years ago

using this device in interaction with a kinect could be a killer application: the kinect gives you the coordinates, the MaKey signals when the user really touch something. Everything could become a touchscreen ...

Turn anything into a videogame controller, even a banana

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