This Mod Turns Big Mouth Billy Bass Into an Arduino-Controlled Platform for Shenanigans
Taylor Tabb, who presumably couldn’t handle hearing “Take Me to the River” anymore, decided to hack a Billy Bass for his own purposes.
Big Mouth Billy Bass is an animatronic prop that resembles a trophy fish mounted to a plaque. When a button on the plaque is pressed, the fish begins flopping around while singing songs like Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” and Al Green’s “Take Me to the River.” Sales figures haven’t been published, but it is safe to say that millions of units were purchased by consumers, particularly in the early 2000s, as novelty gifts. Many people have converted Big Mouth Billy Bass units into custom speaking devices, but Taylor Tabb went all the way and used an Arduino to develop a platform that can be used to control the ridiculous animatronic fish.
When Joe Pelletttieri designed the original Big Mouth Billy Bass back in 1998, he knew it had to be affordable enough to be sold as a gag gift. That’s why the electronics inside of the fish are actually very simple. There are just three motors to make Billy flop around and open his mouth. A small speaker and amplifier, similar to what you’d find in a musical gift card, are used to play the pre-recorded song. Instead of even bothering to reverse engineer the cheap control board, Tabb took the more practical route and replaced it altogether. He used an Arduino Mega board to control the animatronic motors through an Adafruit motor driver board. An analog pin (with its digital-to-analog converter) on the Arduino is used to output audio through a regular 3.5mm auxiliary cable.
This gave Tabb an open platform that he could use to control Billy’s motion and sound output however he liked. Commands can be sent over the serial connection to the Arduino in order to move the motors or play sounds. There were many ways Tabb could have utilized that, but he chose to create the talk2billy.com website. Visitors to the site can enter a message and the Big Mouth Billy Bass in Tabb’s bedroom will then say that message out loud. The message is sent via Google Cloud Functions to a Raspberry Pi. A Python script then sends the appropriate commands to the aforementioned Arduino. We suggest accessing that website to berate Tabb with ridiculous messages until he is forced to find a fun new purpose for Billy that we can all enjoy reading about.
