Pleats and Tweets [Maker Update]
This week on Maker Update: bringing origami to life, Lego lets go of Mindstorms, taking your dragon up a notch, pedaling puppets, and waterproofing your mermaid tech.
Housebreaking Your Robot [Maker Update #186]
This week on Maker Update, a robot dog for attacking poison ivy, spray-on LEDs, Festo’s robot bird, a Pi-powered pet feeder, forging a sword, and mapping LEDs on a mask.
Bending the Rules [Maker Update #182]
This week on Maker Update, a robotic golf club, cheating at Scrabble, a tetrahedron for your head, a really long gripper, and see-through Arduino.
Shaken, Not Stirred [Maker Update #133]
This week on Maker Update, a morphing orb, a Pi TV wall, Apollo 11 projects, 3D printed lock picking, and an Arduino irrigator.
How to Hack Alexa into a Billy Bass Talking Fish
As many of you know from watching my Maker Update video series, I’ve been obsessed with hacking together a Billy Bass novelty talking fish and Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant. About a month ago, an artist named Brian Kane published a viral video showing a Big Mouth Billy Bass novelty singing fish, seemingly voiced by Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant. The internet went nuts for it, and so did I — but mostly I just wanted to know how it worked so that I could make my own.
After a few weeks tinkering with it and collecting the components I needed, I’ve come up with a workable hack. The project documentation and code are available on Instructables. I encourage you to provide feedback and ideas on how to improve it.