Mozilla Festival 2012

MaKey MaKey lets you turn everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the internet. It’s an invention kit for everyone, making creative physical computing accessible with no electronics and no programming required.

The MaKey MaKey circuit board pretends it’s a USB keyboard, but you make your own keys by alligator clipping it to objects that are at least a little bit conductive. Press the spacebar by completing a circuit when you touch a banana, your grandma, or a penny. Make a piano out of pastries, or a game controller out of play-doh.

In this session, after a quick intro to MaKey MaKey, we’ll spend our time tinkering and hacking. We’ll focus on inventions that extend open source web technologies into the physical world in playful new ways.

Beginning with a brief intro to the MaKey MaKey kit, participants will move quickly to having a chance to try it out individually or in small groups. We’ll do some brainstorming together, spend most of the time hacking together crazy inventions, and then wrap up with demos and reflection.

We will plan to have a variety of materials on hand for people to build with, including conductive materials, craft materials, and tools.

Who should come?

• everyone!