Because our teacher mentioned that he wanted more students to know about the Innovation Realization class, I decided to create a technical advertisement for the class. My first idea was to create a light display outside of the class in the display case. Its function would be to disrupt flow in the hallways and bring attention to the space bordering this class. In the coming weeks, I was introduced to the Makey Makey. The device allowed me to create a broad range of hallway disruption mechanisms that would attract the attention of a large amount of people, and hopefully intrigue them in the class that produced it.
The Makey Makey is a pre-programmed Arduino-based board. It enables the user to use a computer, without being in contact with the keys or mouse. My first difficulty with the board was not learning how to use it, but how it worked. It works through electrical circuits that you help establish by coming in contact with a conductive object attached to a gator clip. The objects that you can connect to the gator clip's only requirements are that they are conductive. I experimented with this by using bananas, and other conductive items. When you make said connection, the computer it's plugged into will interpret your button push as a mouse click, space bar push, or even up, down left and right. In the case of the display, the Arduino allowed the user to play Pacman without a keypad. By trial and error with the device, I was able to experiment with enough configurations with it to attach it to a piece of vertically placed glass. As seen in the photo, the actual Arduino board is in a box, while the physical buttons you can use in conjunction with it are on the glass. To make a connection between the Makey Makey and the buttons, I used thin conductive thread and ran it around the glass. That thread allowed me to create cardboard-encased-in-aluminum-foil buttons that are touch sensitive, which makes for a great game of Pacman on glass.