Monday: Version 2.0

Let it be known that on this Monday June 16th of 2013, the second iteration of the MaKey MaKey Chord Board came to life! The process of construction and assembly went exponentially faster than with the first prototype. Also we used the fancier, steam-punkier brass tacks instead of the plain nickel plated tacks. Furthermore, the look and feel of the Chord Board was changed quite drastically. I'm very pleased with the new layout on the faceplate! We went from this...

To this!

This new faceplate design is far superior to the original linear pattern for a few reasons. First, there is no more "play" button on top of the box, instead we have attached an aluminum foil strip to three sides of the MaKey MaKey box (excluding the side which opens). Now, simply holding the box connects the user's hands to the ground, eliminating the need for the play button. Now chords can be played by pressing just one button! 

The second leap forward in design was the placement of the buttons. The old linear succession of buttons made sense in relation to a piano keyboard, but it was not very ergonomic, at least not in my opinion. This new heptagonal shape (yes, it's a heptagon, just not a regular one) feels much better to play and frankly reminds me of a video game controller. That's cool for two reasons. First, the board is now ten times easier to play. Second, most kids and even adults have a good deal of familiarity with the layout of a common video game controller, so there will likely be less of a learning curve with the new design. 

Another small improvement made to the device was flipping around the inside of the box itself. We had to change around a few of the connections, but more importantly this means that the USB connection is now placed in the back of the board. This got the cable out of the way from the user's hands and made for smoother operation. Also, we placed the USB connection point inside the box, instead of being flush with the outside of the MaKey MaKey box. The hole is just small enough to effectively lock the end of the USB cable inside the box for a much more reliable connection. The box must be opened to access the connection, but now the only visible connection is the other end of the USB cable into the computer, much cleaner and more reliable!

After the construction, all that was left to do was to tweak the code in Scratch in order to correspond with the new location of the buttons. Once that was sorted, the MaKey MaKey Chord Board 2.0 was officially functional! This is the evolution of technology, folks. I'm starting to wonder how many revamps the MMCB will undergo before we submit to the MaKey MaKey contest. We still have another week plus a few days, so more changes might be immanent!

Tomorrow is looking like a Video editing day, so we'll see what happens!

Good Night.