Big Mouth Billy Bass - The Singing Sensation

Product Information

The Big Mouth Bass song has been featured prominently in many different media outlets. It can be heard in the movie Finding Nemo (2003), as well as television shows such as SpongeBob SquarePants (1999-present) and The Simpsons (1989-present). It has also been featured in various video games, including Super Mario Sunshine (2002) and Crash Bandicoot (1996). Additionally, it can be heard playing at theme parks across the globe. When you ask Alexa a question, Billy turns to you, and then (with significant delay) lip-syncs Alexa's answers. The actual audio comes out of your Echo speaker, and it's in Alexa's feminine voice rather than Billy's growl. For third-party skills, Billy will lip-sync some, but not all, of the responses. Remember, Billy is not a speaker. Sometimes, Billy Bass sings very slowly and his voice is pitched down to -14.5 semitones. Finding a Billy Bass with this feature is incredibly rare. Big Mouth Billy Bass Sings For the Holidays: A Christmas-themed version of Billy Bass. He wears a Santa hat and has a small jingle bell wrapped around his tail. 2 versions were made. The 1st version released in 1999 sings a Blues version of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" (a parody of "Trouble" by Elvis Presley). The 2nd version released in 2000 sings Country versions of "Jingle Bells" and "Up On a Housetop".

After seeing a number of Raspberry Pi projects that made use of Alexa, I initially assumed that Brian had created an Alexa-powered Pi project that doubled as a means to animate the existing Billy Bass hardware -- and that may be the case. I even posed this idea on my weekly YouTube show, Maker Update. When Pellettieri arrived at Gemmy in 1998, the company was peddling a mechanical sunflower named Sunny that sang “You Are My Sunshine.” But sales weren’t great. Joe Pellettieri, the man behind Big Mouth BIlly Bass (via Mr. Pellettieri) McAlinden, Carrie (June 5, 2017). "True surrealism: Walter Benjamin and The Act of Killing". BFI . Retrieved February 16, 2022. Billy Bass PCB with some of the wires cut. You can cut this piece completely free, but I hadn't committed to that when I took this photo.

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That fish you’re talking about though, I’ve signed that at a lot at meet-and-greets. I wish I could make some money on that, to be honest. As a marketing thing, I wanted my agent to get involved with those people because, after The Sopranos , when people saw that thing — if they were a Sopranos fan — they thought of me. That’s why I’m doing this interview — maybe something will come out of it. If this is not working, you may have to assign the head, mouth, and tail variables in the sketch to a different motor number based on how you connected them. Additionally if the mouth, tail, or head seem to move the wrong direction, you can reverse the two wires attached to the motor shield.

There's really not much else to say about 2018's iteration of the classic Billy Bass. Mostly I want to get across that the fish doesn't actually speak Alexa's answers itself and doesn't function as a Bluetooth speaker, which is part of why it's cheaper than an Echo Dot. A Teensy 4.1 or Teensy 3.2 is used to power [Kevin]’s various singing fish builds. There are two motors inside a singing fish, typically — one motor to pivot the fish’s body, and one to open and close the mouth. Hook these up to a motor driver, and command that with the Teensy, and you’re up and running. To sync the fish with the music, MIDI data is sent to the Teensy over USB. The Teensy takes in note data and uses this to command the motors to make the fish appear to sing along. The product gained popularity due to its novelty factor and the fact that it could lip-sync various songs with its animated mouth. It became a popular gag gift, and was even featured on many talk shows, including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Show with David Letterman. As a new transplant in the product development world, Pellettieri hadn’t quite figured out the best way to find inspiration. Then, toward the end of ‘98, he took a fateful road trip with his wife, Barbara. After independently determining we can make all the motors move, and that we can play music and measure from the Arduino when music is playing, we just need to combine the components.The viral video was actually created by a company called Gemmy Industries, as part of their “Famous Friends” series of animated characters. The singing fish was officially named “Talking Big Mouth Bass”. This plastic fish had sensors that would detect movement in the room, and it would then begin to sing when it was disturbed.

Bensch: We here at the Strong Museum of Play have a Big Mouth Billy Bass. We got one in 2000 because it was one of the hot things from that year. We are interested in the two circuit boards. Be careful with the ribbon cable connecting the two PCBs. This came unplugged for me about 20 times, so you may want to attach this to the fish case immediately (see photos near the end of this post for how I attached mine). To hook Billy’s electronics up to a Raspberry Pi Pico W, Kevin removed the original wiring and controller board, replacing them with two H-Bridges to control Billy’s three motors. Plug your echo into a power supply and connect it to the 3.5mm audio cable, and you should see your fish take on the personality of Alexa! We're in the home stretch now.With the 4 pins on the amplifier oriented at the bottom, you'll have the two speaker wire terminals at the "top". Attach an additional wire to the top left speaker terminal, and connect this to Analog pin 0 on your Arduino. For testing purposes this can be done without the motor shield attached. Once it is working however, you will have to solder this to the motor shield connection marked A0 (actually, I accidentally used A1 - any analog pin will suffice). Creating a talking Alexa fish is a great way to have fun with your pet and make them feel like part of the family. With just a few simple steps and some creativity, you can give your pet a unique experience that they’ll enjoy. Do they still make Big Mouth Billy Bass The Alexa-enabled Big Mouth Billy Bass is an approximately 11-inch-long rubber fish attached to an oval plastic stand. You can mount it on the wall or use it with a built-in, fold-out easel stand. It gets power via micro USB or four AA batteries. The fish is made of latex rubber with an internal plastic mechanical skeleton. At first glance, the product appears to be a mounted game fish. The item was conceived by a Gemmy Industries product development vice president following his visit to a Bass Pro Shop. [6] The mounted fish turns its head, wiggles its tail on the trophy plaque, and sings cover songs, such as " Don't Worry, Be Happy" (1988) by Bobby McFerrin; and " Take Me to the River" (1974) by Al Green. Green claims he received more royalties from Big Mouth Billy Bass than from any other recordings of the song. [7]

There is also an extremely rare 2005-2006 re-release version of the original 1999 model which has Big Mouth Billy Bass Jr’s skin design with "Irving, TX" removed and ON/OFF being replaced with ON/SENSOR.

Echo Dot Tear-down and Audio Detection  

The road, or river, to success for Billy Bass was anything but easy. In fact, Joe Pellettieri’s idea was rejected numerous times before garnering the necessary approvals for production. Not only did Pellettieri have to painstakingly draft blueprint after blueprint to refine the design, but he struggled to nail down the fish’s "wow" factor, which is essential to the success of any novelty toy. To get Alexa (or whatever you want) talking through your fish, connect the free end of the audio cable to the Y-adapter, the rechargeable speaker to the other input of the adapter, and then run the male plug of the adapter into the audio output of the Echo Dot. Pellettieri: Billy Bass was so big that it’s part of pop culture now. It was on The Simpsons , and recently, I saw it on a Geico commercial. McDonald’s did a Filet-O-Fish on a plaque a couple of years ago. I don’t work for Gemmy anymore, but Gemmy’s come out with anniversary versions of it and stuff like that, so I guess they’re still trying to keep it alive. You should remain on this step until you are able to control the head, mouth, and tail by the motors of the same name in the Arduino sketch. This will be needed when we add more sophisticated actions.