DDR-MM

NOTE: This project comes from Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum, co-inventors of the MaKey MaKey.

Jump into wetness, squishiness, or just about anything! In this project, you’ll build a literally “splashy” dance pad for a game very similar to Dance, Dance Revolution. watch about 20 seconds of this video (from 0:39 onwards) to get a sense of what you’ll be building.

Be careful: This project can make you slip and fall or hurt your toes, so always do the project on a nice soft surface like soft sand or soft grass, and take caution to use soft bins or wear shoes so you don’t hurt your toes

For more details about setting up the MaKey MaKey in this way, check out the Musical Jars project guide on the JoyLabz site.

Project Steps

See the result.

Watch this video for 20 seconds to see an example 

http://youtu.be/rfQqh7iCcOU?t=39s

Fill 4 dance-dipping bins.

Find something that can hold water AND you can step in safely, like a rubber wash bin, plastic drawers, some number of really small kiddie pools, or whatever you can find, get creative!

Now for the final and most awesome step:

fill the bins with something awesome:

– Water

– Jello 

– Mud

– Beer

– Coffee

– Spaghetti

– Grapes

– Pennies 

– Ball bearings

– Wet cotton balls

– Wet t-shirts

– Ice cubes

Set up your electronics in a dry place.

Set up a table with Makey Makey and a laptop away from the water and a good falling radius away from where you may topple into a big, puddly mess.

Add wires.

Get 4 (or however many bins you will have) long wires + 1 more wire for “Earth,” for example solid core 6 ft to 10 ft long, which you may need to cut and strip from a wire spool with wirestrippers.

Run one of the wires each from, say each of the arrows on the Makey Makey, to each of the bins, and one wire from “Earth” to hold in your hand.

Load a game.

Load up some software like:

— piano

— bongos

— DDR

— or choose anything under the sun.

A DDR game:

http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/FFR_the_Game.php

Dance and dip to play!

Hold a long ground wire in your hand, and dance!