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We've got new apps! Learn more about each app in this blog post. To celebrate the launch of our new Craft + Code Booster Kit and Get Up + Go Booster Kit, we have also launched new apps that will let you have a full plug-and-play Makey Makey experience!

Legacy and Community Apps

Bongos: Play some bongo drums with the space bar and left arrow. Turn anything into a drum!

Piano
A piano designed for Makey Makey. Play a melody with the arrow keys and space bar (and click, too).

MK-1
A sampling synth made by Eric Rosenbaum for Makey Makey. Record your own sound, use preset scales, and set the keys to play just the notes you want.
Makey Makey Music Sampler
We know that kids (and adults!) love our piano and bongo app. So we wanted to make a sampler to get more kids interested in sound engineering and using digital audio workstations like Garageband and Ableton.

Scratch Piano
This is a piano you can play with the arrow keys. It was created using Scratch, an easy-to-use graphical programming language, so you can remix it and make your own version.

Patatap
Patatap is a portable animation and sound kit. This app works with all the letter keys, so you'll have to use the back of your Makey Makey or remap the arrow keys to use with this app. Warning: contains flashing images.

Makey Makey Midi Player

Thisawesomemidi app was created by Makey Makey Ambassador Liam Baum (aka MrBombMusic.) He built this app with p5.js & Soundfont-Player. Plug in your Makey Makey, and choose an instrument from the dropdown and begin playing a full scale with the instrument of your choice! (Note: you will need to remap a few pins on the back of the board for keys h and j.)

Virtual Musical Makey Makey
This app was created by Johnny Tal as a way to easily upload any sound you want for any input, or choose an instrument from the list and easily monitor what's being triggered on the virtual Makey Makey.

Dot Piano
Dot Piano is a visual musical instrument that lives on the web. Use your computer keys or MIDI keyboard to record a song, then share it simply by sending a link. To use with Makey Makey, use WASDFG on the back of your board or reprogram your arrow keys to letter key presses.
Piano Genie
Another great piano app! Click the Settings wheel to change the piano keys to Makey Makey keypresses and start playing!

Sound Effects
This page turns your keyboard into a sound effects machine. By connecting to the letters on the back of your Makey Makey, you can create your own way to trigger sounds. (Flash Player is no longer supported)

Chamber Music Piano
You can play 10 different notes on this piano (using w, a, s, d, f, left, up, right, down and space). Play along with the video for a piano duet!

Soundplant

This downloadable app is great if you just want to drag and drop sounds onto keys on a keyboard, then press the keys to play them. Try it with the example keymap we made with drum and marimba sounds for macor windows.
Makey Makey OneClick Drum

1 Button Piano Makey Makey Harp

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Wanna plug Makey Makey in and start playing and connecting everyday stuff with no coding involved? Check out these apps that use key presses. When you are ready to start making your own apps and games, head on over to Scratch to code your own projects!

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Introduction: Using an LED to Illuminate a Message

Making things light up feels like magic and there is no better place for magic than in my classroom. Building circuits for the first time takes problem solving and persistence. I began this lesson by borrowing a circuit building guide from the Makey-Makey website. It was perfect for introducing a parallel circuit and it gave enough structure for my students for my students to feel safe to tinker with the mechanics. We then moved on to creating a circuit with a press switch. Check out our exploration!

Supplies:

Makey-Makey printable for circuit creation

LED

Round lithium battery

Aluminum foil for the Makey-Makey project

Copper tape

Glue stick or glue dots

Heavy paper like card stock or watercolor paper

Drawing supplies

Paper fasteners aka brads

Scissors

Step 1: Practice From Makey-Makey

Visit the Makey-Makey website for a template on creating a paper circuit. You will need a battery, an LED, a glue stick and some foil. It's a great way to introduce this lesson.

Step 2: Brainstorm

Brainstorming is always a good first step for a new project. Consider puns and things that typically have a light for the subject of your light work of art. Thinking about using your project as a present for someone could also help shape up your idea. Fold your paper in half. The finished project is meant to be sealed at the end and will not end up like a greeting card. It can be adapted to do that, but these directions will make more like a panel or postcard end product.

Sketch your idea lightly in pencil and then add color once you are satisfied. Use a very sharp pencil to poke a hole through where you want to place your LED. (It's a challenge to do more than one light. I had several students tackle this idea with success, but these directions will focus on one LED.)

Step 3: Sketch the Guts

Place a sharp pencil in the hole to make a dot on the inside of the folded paper. Draw legs on your dot to represent the legs of your LED. Look at your LED to determine which of the little metal legs is longer. Label your legs "long" and "short" on your paper. The long leg of the LED will connect to the battery. Sketch out where you will be placing the copper tape or cut strips of aluminum foil. Try to keep your battery close to the edge of the paper.

Step 4: More Guts!

Trace your battery on the side of the "long" piece of the LED. Add your strips of copper or foil to match the lines that you drew. Put a little bit of a glue dot on the edge of the battery's + side. The + side will face the paper. Position the battery so that it overlaps the copper tape on one half and is stuck to the paper by the glue dot on the other half. Make sure there isn't glue between the battery and the copper tape. Your circuit will not work if there is glue between the connection.

Step 5: Strap Down the LED

Gently bend the legs of the LED so that they are doing the splits on your paper. Place the longer leg on the battery side of the copper tape and the other leg on the parallel strip of copper. Cut a small square of copper tape and secure the LED to the original tape. It's like you are making an LED leg sandwich where the bread is copper tape.

Step 6: Complete That Circuit

Push the brad through a small square of card stock and open the prongs. I bought brads that were a bit too long, but they still worked. You will need to fiddle around with this step to make your LED illuminate. Put a little of the glue dot on each end of the brad and place one part on top of the battery and the other part on the copper tape. When you press the round part of the brad hopefully your LED will light up! If it doesn't, troubleshoot. Somewhere on your circuit there isn't a connection. Electrons are not leaving the battery, moving down the tape, going through the LED and then moving back to the battery. Figure out why. This is the fun part for me. I was delighted when I finally found just the right spot where my LED would glow consistently.

Step 7: Seal It Up

I sealed up my card stock, but some of my students wanted to leave theirs open so that they could keep playing with the insides. I used some glue dots to hold my card stock together. Enjoy your project!

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Using an LED to Illuminate a Message: Making things light up feels like magic and there is no better place for magic than in my classroom. Building circuits for the first time takes problem solving and persistence. I began this lesson by borrowing a circuit building guide from the Mak...

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Ready to start inventing?

First set up takes seconds. Start out easy with a banana piano. Then create game controllers, invent musical instruments, make voting machines, and light up paper circuits. Connect Makey Makey to the world of things around you, and the possibilities are endless!

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Simple Invention How-To Guides For Makey Makey - Makey Shop

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If you need some help with your Makey Makey, look no further. Heres a collection of helpful information to get your new project started, or maybe just some useful tips and tricks to finish up your invention.

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This is a guide for teachers to set up circuit stations. Each station takes between 8-10 minutes to complete! The goal is for this whole activity to take about 45 minutes. Feel free pick and choose stations. This is a great way to start a unit on circuits, but it is an even better way to end a unit on circuits.

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How to Remap your Makey Makey Classic of Makey Makey Go!

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Level Up At-Home Learning

Whether you're back in the classroom, practicing distance learning, homeschooling, or working from a hybrid model, using Makey Makey as a part of your STEM lesson plans means great hands-on activities to help students level up! We are busy creating a variety of content for At-Home learning that can also be used in the classroom.

Want to know more about our classes and use them for your own synchronous and asynchronous activities? Read on to learn about each class in our beginner series, intermediate series, and even embeddable Google Slides you can share in your own Google Classroom, Schoology Class, Canva, and more!

Beginner Online Classes and Activities

Ready to start inventing from home? We've been working hard at creating a course that kids can take on their own or you can use these ideas to help with synchronous and asynchronous activities!

With Makey Makey, you can plug and play right out of the box, make a banana piano, or create a game controller with Play-doh. Take this course from the resource page on our website so you can invent musical instruments, create voting machines, or even light up paper circuits.

Connect Makey Makey to the conductive objects in your home and you can instantaneously give the objects in your living room new purpose!

Teachers, Embed These Google Slides in your Virtual Classes!

We are still creating these interactive slides, but here is the link to Google Slides so you can share them with students: https://bit.ly/MakeyClassroomSlides

Information about Each Beginner Class

Lesson One: How Does a Circuit Work?

Learn how a simple circuit works so you can create your first circuit and light your first LED! You will learn how to craft a simple circuit, learn how Makey Makey works by completing a circuit, and learn how humans can connect to make a key press on your computer!

Lesson Two: How Does Makey Makey Work?

Learn how Makey Makey works so you can start inventing! You will, make a simple sketch of Makey Makey, use your hands to trigger Makey Makey for piano, build a human circuit, and play and explore with Makey Makey.

(This Google Slide combines the first and second lesson)

Lesson Three: What is Conductive?

Makey Makey works by alligator clipping into everyday things that have some conductivity. When you hook an alligator clip into a banana and you hold an alligator clip connected to EARTH, you are actually the conductive stuff that closes the circuit and makes Makey Makey work! But what materials can we use with Makey Makey besides bananas? What does it mean for an item to be conductive? or an insulator? or even a resistor? Let's set up a simple experiment to find out! In this lesson, you will make a conductivity testing board to test items for conductivity; learn that everything in the world is either or conductive or an insulator; and start to ideate inventions with everyday stuff you can find in your home.

Lesson Four: Can you Draw a Playable Instrument?

In this lesson, you will draw your own instrument and plug it up to our piano app to play it. However, there are many pianos you can use to plug and play with Makey Makey, or you can even design your own instrument app in Scratch!

Lesson Five: Coding Key Presses in Scratch

If you have not used Scratch with Makey Makey before, this class is designed for you! Try following along with the create-along style video to code key presses in Scratch. Learn more about specific areas of Scratch to help you learn how to create your own game with ease!

Lesson Six: Craft and Code Interactive Stories

Craft a city out of cardboard, or draw a city to make an interactive poster. The idea behind this project is to craft or create buildings for an imagined city and then tell the story of the people who live in your crafted buildings.

Lesson Seven: Code Key Presses and Remap Makey Makey for MakeCode Arcade

MakeCode Arcade is another great block based programming language! It is block-based liked Scratch but it also includes the JavaScript code for any games you make. It works great with Makey Makey and is a pretty fast set up to use your Makey Makey as a controller once you learn to code games in MakeCode Arcade!

Lesson Eight: Draw and Code a Poem Generator

Now that you know a little bit more about coding games in Scratch and connecting those games to Makey Makey, we thought it would be fun to tinker with literacy. In this project, you'll write different parts of a poem, code them in Scratch, and then draw a poem generator.

Full Youtube Playlist of Beginner Classes

Intermediate Online Classes and Activities

This series of "maker classes" is designed for students who have already explored our beginner course, but now want to go a little further in making fun inventions to use with Makey Makey at home.

This is series of classes for students who've finished our Beginner Level Makey Makey classor makers who already have basic knowledge about Makey Makey.(These classes work best for kids and inventors age 8 and up!)

In the beginner classes we focused on learning how circuits work, exploring Makey Makey, and making drawings as the signal to play piano apps. But did you know that you can create complex sensors with Makey Makey?

Lesson One: Crafting and Designing Switches

The first class in the Maker series focuses on crafting and designing switches out of everyday material.

We want to thank Scrappy Circuitsfor inspiring our binder clip switch! Learn more about Scrappy Circuits in our Let's Invent Webisode with Michael Carroll.

Lesson Two: Hack a Toy

The second class in the maker series shares how to hack a toy with conductive sewing material. But don't worry! If you don't have access to conductive thread and fabric tape, we share an alternative method for using the components in your Makey Makey kit to hack a stuffed toy!

Also included in this class is a challenge to invent your own body systems toy.

We would like to thank Josh Burkerand Patrick Benfield for the work these educators have done using Makey Makey to teach human body systems.

Lesson Three: Designing and Crafting Alarm Systems

In this class, you'll learn to code alarms with previous inventions, and be challenged to design your own alarm system.

Lesson Four: Recyclable Tilt Sensors

In this class, you'll start playing with movement and how movement can close a switch. Build a tilt sensor out of foil and a toilet paper tube and use it to control the Scratch cat!

Lesson Five: Using Secret Codes to a Create a Makey Makey Life Cycle Project

Want to know how to use order and sequence to trigger special effects in your Scratch projects online? In this guide, you'll learn how to code sequence and secret code projects and how to connect them to drawings or other physical elements in the real world that trigger animations in the digital world!

Lesson Six: Advanced Sequencing, Music, and Secret Codes

In this class, you will learn how to create a variable and create your own sequence for secret codes! You'll code an alien synth, and you'll learn some great cardboard tips to boot.

Lesson Seven: Making and Coding Pixel Art FingerPaint

Lesson Eight: Invention Literacy Design Challenge

And Last But Not Least....
A Virtual Makey Makey

We've had quite a few users ask us about a virtual Makey Makey! Since our invention kit is so hands on it really is something you have to tinker with to understand. However we understand that you might have students who need to prototype ideas visually from a distance if you are sharing kits. Here is an idea we have for using a virtual Makey Makey sprite in Scratch projects to help prototype ideas!
Teachers, you can share this Wakelet with others!

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Resources for teaching Makey Makey At-Home, Hybrid Models, or Remote Learning

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Level Up At-Home Learning Whether you're back in the classroom, practicing distance learning, homeschooling, or working from a hybrid model, using Makey Makey as a part of your STEM lesson plans means great hands-on activities to help students level up!

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Makey Makey - magia czy nauka, czyli o co chodzi z grającymi bananami

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Common Core English/Language Arts-

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.7( Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.,

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.7 (Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.)

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.7 (Conduct short research projects that build knowledge about a topic.)

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.7 (Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.)

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Makey Makey Paper Circuit Valentine Template

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Common Core English/Language Arts- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.7( Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration., CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.7 (Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.)

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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#SuperKoderski warsztat z Makey-Makey (cz. 2)

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#SuperKoderski warsztat z Makey-Makey (cz. 1)

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#SuperKoderski warsztat z Makey-Makey (cz. 3)

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Makey makey offline