For individuals who have been alive and aware earlier than the fashionable Web, there have been in actual fact issues that went “viral” and have become cultural phenomenon for one cause or one other. Though they didn’t unfold as rapidly or develop into forgotten as quick, issues like Beanie Infants or greeting a buddy with an exaggerated “Whassup?” might all be thought-about viral hits of the pre-Web period.
One other offline hit from the late 90s was the Billy Bass, an absurdist little bit of bodily comedy within the type of a speaking, taxidermied fish. On the time it might solely come to life and say just a few canned traces, however with the assistance of recent {hardware} it may possibly tackle a complete new life.
This undertaking involves us from [Cian] who gutted the fish’s {hardware} to show it into a wise voice assistant with some fashionable elements, beginning with an ESP32 S3. This chip has sufficient energy to detect customized “wake phrases” to activate the fish assistant in addition to go the dialog logic to and from a extra highly effective laptop, deal with the audio enter and output, and management the fish’s head and tail motors. These motors, in addition to the speaker, are the one unique elements remaining. The brand new {hardware}, together with an amplifier for the speaker, are mounted on a customized 3D printed backplate.
After some testing and troubleshooting, the augmented Billy was able to pay attention for instructions and converse with the person in a lot the identical method as an Alexa or different dwelling assistant would. [Cian] constructed this to work with Residence Assistant although, so it’s far more open and simpler to recreate for anybody who nonetheless has considered one of these items of 90s kitch in a field someplace.
Maybe unsurprisingly, these speaking fish have been the premise of loads of hacks through the years since their unique launch like this one from just a few years in the past that improves its singing capacity or this one from 2005 that brings Linux to 1.
