makey makey - a invetion kit for everyone

[trogluddite]

you speak from my mind trog.

Ah, I wondered who it was - you really shouldn't do that when I'm at work, it's so hard to concentrate when other people's 'Makey Makey' thoughts keep distracting me at random!

[oddson]

I'm playing with this and it looks promising
http://www.pjrc.com/store/teensypp_pins.html
http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/projects.html

That's cool... i was going to paste a link to pjrc in this thread yesterday (as i have elsewhere on this forum).

[trogluddite]

Some fantastic project there, thanks for the link. The variety is quite stunning.

Been fiddling more with PIC microcontrollers - we make a little doo-dad called ECIO at work that is a very similar concept to the little "Teensy", except PIC based. There's also a range of other little ready made boards that interface with it - including MIDI.
Not as robust or compact as a custom PCB etc, but cool for prototyping in a 'MCU Lego' kind of way.
I just arranged a few days ago to loan a box of stuff on the understanding that I write up my little project to publish on the web. Too good an opportunity to waste. Probably just something simple like a little MIDI controller for starters; I'll post if anything interesting comes of it.

[billv]

Thanks for the tip on "Makey" and "Teensy" guys. Makey looks really bent.
Lots of DIY talk here, so, here's my 2 cents....
A few years ago I built a Midi Controlller out of this..
http://www.halemicro.com/Products/Products.html
Works great.
I was lucky though-my version has a switch, that gives you an another 32 ins/outs, taking it to 64 in/out.
They changed it shortly after I bought mine, and this feature was taken out.
Note:
They did advise in the manual that an extra capacitor may be needed to smooth things out. I didn't listen.
My controls can be a little "jumpy" when first touched. Will have to re-do project one day.
Hope this helps.

[MyCo]

I'm playing with this and it looks promising
http://www.pjrc.com/store/teensypp_pins.html
http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/projects.html

That's cool... i was going to paste a link to pjrc in this thread yesterday (as i have elsewhere on this forum).

I don't get the point of making just another plattform for AVR...
and $27 for an AVR, USB connector,crystal and some passives, that's a joke.

Buy an ISP (eg. mySmartUSB light for 15€), drop an AVR-DIP into a breadboard, and you'll have exactly the same, and you can programm every AVR not only the one on the PCB

BTW: My recent project (IR controlled MR16-Spot with 24x3 white, 24 red and 8 RGB LED separately controllable):
http://www.yedey.com/other/back.jpg
http://www.yedey.com/other/front.jpg

BTW2: J8 - J11 are the Pins of the ISP as mentioned above

[oddson]

I don't get the point of making just another plattform for AVR...
and $27 for an AVR, USB connector,crystal and some passives, that's a joke.

The basic unit is $16 and $19 with header pins pre-soldered. I spent that much on beer last night at dinner.

Ok, so it's about triple the price of the chip alone but it lowers the bar for being able to cobble together a MIDI controller. And at least it lets you do MIDI directly thru USB.

Yeah if you're keen you can do it all yourself but this was the right first step for me.

[oddson]

Oh... I should mention the guy does an Arduino package that makes working with this thing dead easy and (again) supports other than Serial-USB:

http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/teensyduino.html

[philter5]

i am just at the start with building devices . but the other possibilities/controllers myco or oddson called are sounding A LOT more interesting than the makey makwey ! i got a doepfer usb64 for a good prize from a friend, but havent started a serious project yet.
but know that i am aware of thefact that devices that can send MIDI,Keystrokes, MouseEvents and even more
are so cheap and simple to handle-.... : i am happy

[oddson]

but now that i am aware of the fact that devices that can send MIDI,Keystrokes, MouseEvents and even more are so cheap and simple to handle-.... : i am happy

Simple is relative... MyCo's version of simple isn't as simple as mine!

[DigitalWhiteByte]

another affordable project
http://www.maxjusticz.com/introducing-the-chomp/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/247 ... controller