STEAM projects: light, art and music with electronics
Electronics is a medium as well as a science. These projects start from color, light and sound, and the engineering comes along because the art needs it.
- Ages 10 and up
- About 20 to 60 minutes a project
- Nothing to buy or install
Projects to open
Each one runs in your browser in one click, with no account. Ages and times are suggestions.
Rainbow strip
A hue wheel running down sixteen addressable LEDs.
- Ages 12 and up
- About 30 minutes
Plasma panel
Light art: three sine waves drifting across 256 LEDs.
- Ages 13 and up
- About 45 minutes
Light theremin
Wave your hand over the light sensor and the pitch follows.
- Ages 11 and up
- About 30 minutes
Music box
A melody, a turning drum and a buzz on the beat.
- Ages 12 and up
- About 45 minutes
Light and color
Mix colors in code on an RGB LED, run a rainbow down a strip of addressable LEDs, or animate a 16 by 16 panel of light. Each is a canvas: change the numbers and you change the piece.
Sound and music
Play a melody note by note, turn light into pitch with a light theremin, or drive a music box whose drum turns while the tune plays. Rewriting the tune is a lesson in lists, loops and timing.
Wearables and installations
Mokxi does not have sewable wearable boards yet. Students can still design a wearable or an installation here first: a small board like the XIAO, a strip of LEDs, a button, and the light pattern they want, before building it with a kit.
- Plan the pattern on the rainbow strip.
- Add a button that changes the mode.
- Build it for real once the code is right.
What you need
Nothing but a browser. Mokxi is a web page. The circuit and the code run inside the browser tab, the C++ compiles there too, and nothing is downloaded or installed, so it works on a school Chromebook, a family laptop or a tablet.
Kids’ privacy, plainly
What happens to a child’s information, written from what the code does.
- Every project here opens and runs with no account, so a child never has to give a name or an email to use it.
- Saving work needs an account. A child under 13 can have one only with consent: a parent writes to us from their own email address and we confirm it, or a school gives consent for its classes.
- For a student in a class, no analytics or advertising tag loads on any page, and classmates never see each other’s email addresses.
The details, for parents and schools: Student data privacy, COPPA and FERPA
Questions
What does STEAM add to STEM?
The arts. Here that means starting from a color, a pattern or a sound and using electronics and code to make it, which brings in students who might not pick a science project first.
Can students design their own piece?
Yes. Every project opens in the editor, and changing the colors, timing or notes is the first step in each one.
Are there wearable boards?
Not yet. Students can design the circuit and the light pattern on a small board here, then build the wearable with a kit.
Give it a try
Open a project, press Run, and change one thing. No account needed to start.
Free forever. Every board and part. Saves your projects. Works on Chromebooks.