{"id":59,"date":"2013-04-26T21:02:10","date_gmt":"2013-04-26T21:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/?p=59"},"modified":"2013-04-26T21:02:10","modified_gmt":"2013-04-26T21:02:10","slug":"a-control-cylinder-because-i-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/?p=59","title":{"rendered":"A Control Cylinder – Because I Can!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another Makey-Makey project in our series of outrageous user interfaces.<\/p>\n

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A control cylinder – powered by a makey-makey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

You can see where this is going – tune in next week for the washing-up glove of power,,,<\/p>\n

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…<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

As a mechanism, the buttons work reasonably well when everything is in place.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Refinements<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another Makey-Makey project in our series of outrageous user interfaces. 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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “A Control Cylinder – Because I Can!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[35,34,14,32],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-updates","tag-input","tag-makey-makey","tag-scratch","tag-user-interface"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60,"href":"http:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/60"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}