Maker Project Lab
November 10, 2022 AUTHOR: Donald Bell CATEGORIES: News Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

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November 18, 2016 AUTHOR: Donald Bell CATEGORIES: Project Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.
Make an Amazon Alexa talk through an animatronic Billy Bass singing fish.

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