For my controller portion, I decided to incorporate my lizard character “Blep” as the controller for my final project.
I had completely scrapped my initial interactive touch project and rewrote it.
My project now includes a continuation of the story of “Blep”, as previously mentioned, and “Ece”. Ece is a faceless astronaut that is friends with Blep. The two of them live on a space station in the middle of no where in space and keep each other company. I wanted to show the friendship between the two of them to show the underappreciated truth of a good friendship.
For making the controller, I hooked up LEDs in Blep’s eyes (this is a crochet version of Blep to just show how the concept would function). I ran conductive thread through his body to set up the LEDs in parallel connected to the Key_Out pin on the Makey Makey. This port provides 5V of power when any key is pressed, so Blep’s eyes blink when you press any of the buttons.
You have to hold Blep’s tounge to connect yourself to ground. I plan to get the touch controller from Adafruit to get past having to connect to ground and a microcontroller to control the lights.
When you press each of the buttons, a different memory of Ece and Blep is shown on screen in front of a room in the space station.
I would preferred to have made a fleece version of Blep and sewn everything in, but I’ll have to work on that for another day 🙂
I found it funny that you have to hold the tongue, in order to ground yourself. What software did you use to create the background for the animations? One opinion I have is possibly adding some movement to the memories, almost making them seem more life-like and more of Blep remembering them.
The controller itself is very fun and is cohesive with the concept of the animations.
An opinion from class would be to add sounds to blep when touched such as a Yoshi sound and food flying around the environment. Will there be any new characters joining the Blep and Ece universe in future projects? Looking at Blep really reminds me of my dog.
Oops I replied to the wrong area.
This is quite possibly one of the greatest controllers I’ve seen used throughout these projects. I’m simply astonished by how well integrated the system was and how well it worked. It’s a nice wholesome piece with good animation, nice colors, and great character. I want to ask how you got the plush toy to be conductive for the Makey Makey? The design was integrated so seamlessly, I thought that the plush was made specifically for the project.