New Project November: Makey Makey Arcade Buttons

November 08, 2021

Today's New Project November idea comes from Frazer Merrick! In Frazer's Ableton guide, he shares how to make your own controller with these great arcade buttons.

These satisfying clicky buttons work great with Makey Makey! You can use 1 to 18 different arcade buttons in your project with one Makey Makey! Just make sure to wire one terminal to EARTH and one terminal to a key press on your Makey Makey.

These slick buttons work by bridging the gap between these two metal terminals when you press on the top of the button.

A spring keeps the button up, but when you press down, a metal piece bridges the gap between these two prongs.

If you want to use multiple buttons in your project, you can daisy chain your EARTH connections with the wire in our Get Up +Go! Booster Kit.

Then wire the other terminal to the key press of your choice on your Makey Makey invention kit!

Plug and Play

Once your buttons are all wired up, you are ready to plug and play with our new apps! (Or you can code your own project in Scratch!)

Finished cardboard arcade controller with buttons wired to a Makey Makey

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 with any invention!

Craft and Code Booster Kit

Get up + Go! Booster Kit

The NEW Makey Makey Piano App

The new Makey Makey Piano App is the culmination of years of learning and play at JoyLabz. We took our tried-and-true piano app that was created when Makey Makey was first introduced, and we took it up a level. The new Piano App has a number of cool features we think you'll like!

New Piano App Features

Selectable Instruments : Yes! You can choose from a number of different instruments now instead of just a piano. Why not a trumpet piano? Piccolo?
Octave Choice : Adjust this slider to pick the octave you want to play music in.
Number of Piano Keys : Want more keys? Or less? You can change the number of keys on your piano by adjusting this slider.
Scale and Starting Note : Want to start with a different note? Not a problem!
Want to use different key presses? Select the piano key and adjust to a different key press in the control panel.

We designed the new Piano App to give you more flexibility when building musical instruments with the Makey Makey. We wanted an app that still works with Makey Makey right out of the box and that inspires you to jam out and to create an entire band of Makey Makey instruments.

We just made designing your own musical instrument even easier!

Jam Out on the NEW Piano App!

Makey Makey Counter

Classroom exit ticket board: Please Rate Today's Learning, with Makey Makey touch points beside a star-bordered display

One of our favorite Makey Makey projects is this exit ticket / data collector project. Now you can focus on building your physical device and use our new Makey Makey Counter App for plug-and-play functionality right away!

Need more buttons? Want to use different inputs? No problem! Just adjust the sliders in the control panel to make the Counter App do what you need.

Launch the Counter!

Makey Makey Buzzer App

Want to make a Jeopardy-style quiz show for your classroom or maybe have a trivia night at home? With our new Buzzer App, you can easily build your own custom switches. Our app does all the work to see who buzzed in first!.

This app is designed to emulate a game show style buzz-in system. The “host” or leader of a game can “start” a session and then each individual participant can “buzz-in” by pressing the key assigned to them.

Just connect each button to the defined key for that participant in the Buzzer App and start buzzing in! Now you can be the next contestant in your own game show.