Interactive Prototype II (Concept, Progression, Outcome and VIDEO Demonstration!

Concept and Idea for Interactive prototype II

image 1

The screenshot above is the plan that i had, to originally have 4 horizontal and 4 vertical wires that intersect with each other so when each time the buttons are pressed, the corresponding coordinate in the game will light up as a mark. So the idea is to have keys a,s,d,f mapped to the horizontal wires and also arrow keys left, up, down and right connected to the vertical wires. When a button is pressed, say the top left corner, the makey makey will read it as coordinate (a, left arrow).

Image 2

For image 2, it is a 3d view of the physical buttons that i came to think about, which are two horizontal wires that intersect with each other and once the button is pushed, button is connected to the ground and a full circuit connection is made with MakeyMakey.

PROGRESSION/PLAN

Image 3 - Electrical wires i found from Repco. and using a blade, insulators of the wires were cut in the middle. This is to make sure the connection occurs when buttons is pressed or touched. 

Image 4 - four vertical wires and also one of the four horizontal wires that is intersecting with the vertical wires.

 Image 5- using playdoh as buttons

BUT WAIT THIS PLAN DOESN'T WORK! As I connected all of the board to the MakeyMakey, it was obvious that it would not work, this is because as all the 4 horizontal and 4 vertical wires are constantly connected, this means that each time one button is pressed, the MakeyMakey recognizes it as all buttons at once (a,s,d,f, up, down, left and right), as all buttons are connected/intersected with each other all the time. Then what to do now??!!

PLAN B

Instead of having all these wires intersect with each other all the time, I made it in such a way that it only intersects when the buttons (playdoh) are touched.

See pictures below and you'll understand more!

 Image 6 - So with this new plan, the horizontal wires are on the base of the board, and the vertical ones are floating.

 Image 7 - Playdohs are added as buttons to the vertical floating wires. So, when these playdohs are pressed, it will touch the base wire and make an intersection, not forgetting that the ground will be connected to the user.







Image 8- image below: close up of the playdoh/buttons on the wires. there are four buttons in each wire, the buttons on the sides are bigger as it is harder for it to be pressed, compared to the middle buttons which are easier.

image 9 - connection of the wires to the MakeyMakey.

OUTCOME

Image 10 - the complete set up!

Referring to image 10, on the top right would be my surface (connected to the MakeyMakey) where i run the game, and the middle would be the physical board itself. At the bottom right, there are two wristbands green and red in colour; these two wristbands are used as ground connected to users. Users easily just slide the wristband into any of their finger.

Video Demonstration

Thank you for going through this long blog post! (: