Exciting things to come, Dr. Ruthmann has told us about an exciting opportunity to get involved with music technology in New York. I'm really interested to see ideas generated by others that repurpose existing technology for a musical application. It seems that there will also be some sort of contest during the two days for the best "musical hack". Plus, this will be a nice opportunity to get out of the Bay state for a little bit.
Today's activities included a little bit of troubleshooting with the MaKey MaKey Chord Board 2.0. There was a considerable delay from the instance of pressing the button and triggering the chord on the computer. We switched back to the old plain nickel tacks and sure enough, the chord playback was back to the normal level. This brought to light another issue, the actual connection from the pin to the lead wires inside the box. At the moment the bare wire is just wrapped around the tack on the inside of the box. This is functional but no so reliable as time has revealed. So, a possible solution would be soldering the wire to the pins, but the solder would effectively lock the tacks into place. So Graham had the idea of using the conductive paint as a means of solidifying the connection.
So, with all that in mind, the MaKey MaKey Chord Board continues to evolve into a simpler, more intuitive and more durable project. Crazy to think that we still have about two weeks to refine our design, so the possibilities are wide open for the next iteration of the MMCB. Personally, it'd like to see a version made with a plastic project box using soldered connections. The project box could be a lot smaller than the MaKey MaKey box, maybe in the ball park of an iPhone for area, but with more depth. Anyhow, just an idea.
That's all for today, more video work tomorrow!
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