Billy Bass With Selectable Clips

[Will] enjoys giving hacked items as Secret Santa gifts and this year he decided to augment a Billy Bass. These gag items have become a popular hack to use as a prop or to read your Twitter updates to you. Right of the bat he scrapped the original PCB and sent it to the gift’s future recipient as if he were a kidnapper extorting a family. He then set to work replacing the guts with a pair of PIC 18F452 microcontrollers. One uses power transistors to control the movement, the other controls an MP3 that handles the sound clips. The interface has some LEDs for added effect and uses a dial to select each sound clip which is displayed on a 4×20 character LCD.

The project has several voltage headaches as the motors operate at 6v and 4v, the microcontrollers and LCD display at 5v, and the MP3 is looking for 1.5v. That’s for voltages supplying this Frankenstein’d schematic. But he pulled it off, as you can see in the video after the break.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZXQrOQ1In0]

22 thoughts on “Billy Bass With Selectable Clips

  1. how come the description is all like Will and ‘HE’, but the narrator of the video is obviously neither a HE, nor a Will? unless he just likes wearing a ring..
    but nice hack. although my attention span is too short for me to stick around to hear the fish after pressing a button.

  2. I really despise those things. Every time I come across one I want to rip it off the wall and smash it.

    Nothing is more annoying than being somewhere, and having some child playing it non-stop the whole time I am there.

    Yes, I really have an issue with the stupid fake talking fish.

  3. OMFG when I first read the article something caught my eye “, the other controls an MP3 that handles the sound clips” but I decided to give the writer the benefit of the doubt, however I see that they have done it again further on “display at 5v, and the MP3 is looking for 1.5v”. Do you see that?? Referring to a piece of hardware with the name of a piece of software!!!

    It’s the same as when retards call thumb drives / flash drives / memory sticks… USB’s!!! A frigging USB is a Universal Serial Bus… It’s not a storage medium…. I think I am a little tired tonight but this kind of stuff gets on my nerve any time… I can’t believe it’s happening on a technical site such as this!…. I don’t call my TV a HDMI do I?… or my mobile phone a GSM…. so what gives?

    ok Glad I’ve got that out the way….

    Nice mod :)

  4. I’d like to be able to mount a BMBB on the beach boardwalk and from a safe distance (~40-50′) be able to send rude remarks from a head-set mic, accompanied by suggestive head and tail movements (IR hand-held controller?) to passing babes in bikinis. Who’s in?

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