user interface – Scratch in Control

Another Makey-Makey project in our series of outrageous user interfaces.

A control cylinder – powered by a makey-makey

This one arose from some discussion in the wake of the ghost controller. I have a student who is thinking about what sort of user-interface you could build for exploring a 3D environment with a Makey-Makey.

You can see where this is going – tune in next week for the washing-up glove of power,,,

One of the possibilities we discussed was having an object to grip – like a baton. This could incorporate a glove, but I decided to have a go with recycling some packaging foam and a cylindrical tube more commonly used for holding stackable cruchy potato-based snacks…

I’ve taken several shots of the process, so I will put them together as a slideshow later. But the photo aboves should give a reasonable idea of how it’s put together. First I drew an outline of my hand on card to position where the buttons for each finger should go.

On this card, I used a 2B pencil to draw the circuit for my buttons – testing each location with a piece of card which had conductive tape attached to it. I then took another card, slightly thinner – and cut out holes to eexpose only the button areas. On the surface of this, I added the foam packaging to raise the card/conductive tape top half of the button above the graphite part.

As a mechanism, the buttons work reasonably well when everything is in place.

The card layers were then stuck round the outside of the cylinder and clipped to the makey-makey. A simple Scratch script was used to test the device.

Refinements

I think a redesign of the graphite side of the buttons could improve the responsiveness of the cylinder. Also, the layout for the buttons is for a hand resting on the cylinder. Next time, I shall design for the hand to be gripped round the baton.

It would be possible to add extra features. This one used four fingers for up/down/left/right and the thumb to emulate a mouse click. It would also be possible to add a tilt switch mechanism for the device.

Many years ago I coined the phrase ‘conceptual magpie’. Some people would argue that I’m not the first to think this way – depending on which online source you believe, either Dali or Picasso apparently said “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

Like so many other teachers, I trawl forums, twitter feeds, blogs and books in search of that elusive holy grail – inspiration. The other day, I saw something that caught my imagination @joshburker embedded a video from https://t.co/Jyle5Z2KHp and I knew I’d have to introduce the Robo-Sharks to this when we next met.

We’ve done outrageous user-interfaces before:

A Red Nose Day Joy Balloon
The Joy Can – a liquid-filled 3D tilt switch
Computer-Moderated Board Games
Bottle-top Buttons

Come to Scratch in Control – our free one day training course for teachers in Prague on Scratch Day, May 18 2013 – and you’ll see some of these (and much more) in action. But rather than use a Makey-Makey, I decided to do this one with a Picoboard – just for fun.

ghost maze controller — Here is the entire setup – the maze script running on the computer, the maze taped to the top of the ghost controller and a Picoboard peeking out from under it.

There are loads of ways we could have tackled this – one of the Robo-Sharks suggested we could have just taped a JoyCan to the bottom of the maze controller. That’s what I like to see – build on an existing solution. But not this time. I wanted something that would be reasonably easy for other teachers to replicate in class. And, as another student had already pointed out; letting kids loose with cans that are half-full of water in close proximity to computers is tempting fate a little…

So, just to be different, I decided to use four reed switches (they call them jazýčkový spínač – tongue switches – here in the Czech Republic). They switch on/off if they are in close proximity to a magnet. I taped each of them to the outside of a thin plastic container, and put a magnet – the type you use to attach things to fridge dooor and whieboards – to roll around inside it.

This was then taped to the bottom of a spare thin card box I just happened to have lying around, and a copy of the maze I’d drawn in Scratch variant BYOB was taped onto the top. No expense spared here – Heath Robinson, Rube Goldberg, you aint seen nothing…

The most difficult part of the whole exercise was ensuring that a downwards left tilt corresponded to a left roll of the ball on the screen and so on…

It was fun, reasonably cheap (4 reed switches cost about the equivalent of US$4 here) – the components can be easily re-used/recycled and the coding can be as simple/difficult as you want.

To extend it – a classier endgame sequence would be a start, A timer, a score including penalties for hitting the edges. I’d favour an ‘augmented reality’ style of approach – taking a photo on the maze controller and perhaps shifting it slightly when the controller is tilted.

My students wanted to add monsters to avoid…

Personally, I’d go for a curriculum-related option instead. Navigate the maze to collect three numbers that add up to 100 or which are all factors of 108. Make your way to the exit while spelling out a key vocabulary term by rolling the ball over specific letters placed in strategic points in the maze.

Tag: user interface

A Control Cylinder – Because I Can!

The Ghost Controller – for Virtual Mazes…