Giving Billy Bass the arti-fish-al intelligence he always deserved
If you were unlucky enough to visit a big box retail store or goofy uncleβs home around the turn of the century, you would have undoubtedly come across a Big Mouth Billy Bass. Thatβs an animatronic fish that wiggles on a plaque while older, very licensable hit songs play. But while olβ Billy was wildly popular at the time and spawned a whole new market segment, he wasnβt very sophisticated. TonyβK decided to address those cognitive shortcomings by giving Billy Bass an βarti-fish-al intelligenceβ upgrade.
Internally, the original Big Mouth Billy Bass is quite simple. It has a single electric motor that drives the animatronic movement through a plastic mechanism, with a cheap sound chip that has Al Greenβs βTake Me to the Riverβ burned in. TonyβKβs modification gives the user full control over everything, so they can program whatever behavior they like and use any audio. Using a standard infrared remote control, the user can activate those programmed sequences. If desired, Billy can be switched back to his normal routines.
TonyβK achieved that using two Arduino UNO Rev3 boards. One handles motor control, while the other plays audio. TonyβK chose to do that so he could use a motor driver shield with one Arduino and an SD card shield with the other. This takes advantage of the TMRpcm library, which makes it possible to play PCM and WAV files without a dedicated audio DAC (digital-to-analog converter). The audio quality wonβt be stellar, but it is good enough for this purpose.
What to play all comes down to the builderβs ability to think up fish-related puns. If you can find a way to incorporate a Jimmy Buffett song, youβll be golden!
The post Giving Billy Bass the arti-fish-al intelligence he always deserved appeared first on Arduino Blog.