The Makey Makey has been a stalwart board for years that guaranteed fun in whatever way you used it. It can turn almost anything into a keyboard or HID input, using conductivity and closed-loop circuitry to convert tapping a carrot into a music note, a video game input, or to trigger an action on your computer. One of my favourite demos is this music video playing “Teardrop” by Massive Attack on a bunch of fruit and vegetables. (Bonus points if you can name the show that uses this song as its theme!) However, Makey Makey was initially released during the early 2010s and is in sore need of an update for the modern age. Luckily for us, the McPlay ESP32 Makey Makey is here to answer that call!
The main improvement is swapping the original ATMega32u4 for an ESP32-S2, bringing features like 2.4 GHz WiFi, Bluetooth, and easy autodetection on your computer as an “ESP32 S2 HID”. And even better, the micro-USB is upgraded to a USB-C. Long gone are the days of digging through your cable drawer for the fabled micro-USB; instead, you can just use a USB-C cable that has become a standard in our lives. With the inclusion of onboard LEDs on the McPlay, diagnostics and checking that your fruit-of-choice is conductive enough is a breeze.
The documentation for the McPlay is all shared on Github, and the project is open-source with the Gerber files, schematic, and Arduino sketches available. This project comes from Gerai Cerdas, based in Banten, Indonesia, and they have a number of other ESP32-based projects in their store for you to take a look at as well!
