MaKey MaKey / Squishy Circuits Maze

What does building a maze and solving it have to do with engineering, you may ask. Real-life robots have to travel through mazes and structures dangerous for humans all the time, like ocean depths, volcanoes, factories, war zones, and even other planets like the Mars Rover on Mars.

In this activity you’ll will be creating an interactive tabletop maze using your imagination, some conductive materials, and the Makey Makey.

What You’ll Need:

1 x Makey Makey

See larger image

Makey Makey – An Invention Kit for Everyone

Turn everyday objects like bananas into touchpads!
Connect the world around you to your computer! Setup takes just seconds.
Just plug, clip, and play! No programing knowledge needed.

Additional images:

Price: $49.95

Buy Now

1 x Squishy Circuits (or play-doh)

1 x Carboard or other surface to lay your maze on.

A computer with internet access (for Scratch)

Steps:

1. Create a drawing for the layout of the maze and its basic features

2. Try creating your maze with the play-doh and begin playing with the magnets by placing one on top of the table and control it with one underneath. Try to see if you can get an LED to light up when you hit the wall of your maze.

3. Break up into groups or work as a team and use Scratch to build a timer. Never used Scratch? Check out MIT’s how-to if you want to tinker around and make your own scoreboard.

4. Think of how you want to make your maze: Will you collect items, race the clock, or defeat some sort of enemy? To test use our “Simple Maze Game” sketch, read the project controls, and test them on the keyboard.

5. Attach the Makey Makey aligator clips to the proper connections(down arrow to your play-doh maze, up arrow to any time power-ups) and connect the magnetic player to Earth!(for this part of the tinkering you no longer need the battery)

Here are some photos from our recent club meeting and the creative mazes our students built