This past Friday, some of our very own St. Matthew's teachers played with a Makey Makey kit. Watch as they play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star using clay, bananas, and some hand slapping!

Today, I am working on the different modules for Arduino, from the Starter Kit. I am on lesson 3, called the Love-O-Meter. Although the name sounds intriguing, what it actually does is measure temperature. Using a temp sensor and LED lights, this module measures the temperature of your fingers as you hold the sensor, and turns lights on the hotter the sensor gets. Here's a picture of the board set up. You can't see it, but I am holding the temp sensor between my thumb and forefinger. When it started, the lights were all off, but the longer I held the sensor, the more lights started to turn on.

You can adjust the code (called a sketch) that runs this module in a number of ways. One way I adjusted it was to change the baseline temperature. I did this because the baseline temperature was set too high, the lights were already on before I even touched the sensor. By setting the baseline temperature lower, the lights started as OFF, then as I held the sensor, they turned ON as the heat increased.

Speaking of Arduino, Mrs. Esby sent me an amazing article and video today. Check this out, the project was programmed with an Arduino: A Car That's Powered by Tweets and Built by Kids.

In preparation for the class in the fall, one of the tools we will use is the 3D printer. Here's a quick video of a print in progress. This little chess piece took 1 and a half hours to print. What you see on the video are small clips covering different stages of that print job. For this particular job, I did not create the object, but instead used one of the many downloadable files available online. My next goal is to create an object using TinkerCAD, then print it in 3D. Here's an ARQ Spin of the chess piece.