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Boogie Bass Hacked
vonmar writes "A 20-second re-recordable message has been hacked into the "Boogie Bass" talking fish. The audio is stored on an ISD 1420P solid-state chipcorder voice record/playback chip. The head, tail, and mouth movements are also re-recordable, and are stored in EEPROM inside an ATMEL AT89S8252 microcontroller. Read more about it at the creator's site."
Just 3 hours ago I sent in a Newly Released hack to convert Iomega ZipCD 12x recorder to a Plextor to Slashdot. I come here to see if it was posted... and what do I find, a hacked Bass story was posted. I guess Slashdot has their priorities :)
Yeah, but didn't he mention that soon he'd have a Beowulf Cluster of them?
We have a story of Indian "Hackers" and now there's news of this fish being "hacked".
So with the word "hacker" being used here, did the Indian "hackers" "Hack" the Boogie Fish? Or was the fish "cracked" or "defaced"?
I hate to break it to you, but the only BLO hack was a social engineering one. No actual Barbies/GI Joes were actually hacked -- the entire thing was a hoax aided and abetted by a willing media who accepted the BLO video press releases without verifying the story.
Now all we need to do is give the fish a microphone and and some translation software and you could have a Babelfish to stick in your ear.
At work we joked around about hacking these things and putting them in our offices as emergency notifiers. So instead of getting paged, we'd get a nice little song, "The router is down dooby doo down down..." Though I imagine it would get old real quick like.
The quaility of the speaker on this thing is pretty bad, the recording to a chip limits the number of things you can say. Since the motors can be triggered by switching them on, then letting them reset (they have springs that do that), or as the page states:
"A little investigation with an oscilloscope revealed that the control of the Bass' head/tail/mouth is extremely simple: energize the corresponding motor, and the head turns out, the tail extends, or the mouth opens. De-energize the motor, and the corresponding body part returns (by a spring) to it's "rest" state. We've got binary actuators here folks. And it was clear that we could tie in to the gate inputs of the motor drivers with some simple diode-or circuitry."
So you can access the motors directly from an outside source via cable leading into the fish.
Then rig up a conection to a printer port (much easier than serial stuff) for the fish cable.
Then write a winamp plugin (or something like that) that takes the frequency output (like other plugins do), and use that to send on/off signals to the printer port->cable->fish. You could have loud bass be the trigger on for the tail, loud treble will switch on the mouth motor, etc. Then hook up the soundcard to a stereo. That way, you have good sound and a talking fish that can be used with any audio file. The plugin part could be done in hardware if you are good with electronics, and then used with a radio or other audio source.
Good Idea, Eh?
New from Ronco! It's the Mr. Fish-a-Phone!
"Hey, good lookin' -- we'll swim back to pick you up later!"
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
Ya buy a bunch of these things and reprogram them to say and do "interesting" things. Then you carefully repackage them, sneak them back into the store, and put them on the shelf. Imagine the fun with Grandma gives one to uncle Fred!!!
The Barbie Liberation Organization did this a while back by switching the voiceboxes of talking Barbie dolls with those of talking G.I. Joes and then putting them back into toy stores. Lot's of little boys and girls got more than they expected from Santa that year!
I dunno, I think pretty much everyone can agree that a Boogie Bass that says "Satan commands you to spread the blood of the innocent" in a demonic voice is pretty damn funny. Er, I guess a schizophrenic might not find it so funny.
A geeky story, and the fish doesn't even run on Linux!
Sacrilege!
"And like that
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
You know, I really must congratulate the guy who hacked this stupid fish. I mean, that's about the tackiest thing in the world; it might at least be fun if it reminds you that you're fat and ugly or makes some other nasty remarks.
"Hey! Buddy! You think I look stupid? Look in the mirror!"
Anyway, having said that, I completely understand the creative genius. You see, I have a snowblower.
Snowblowers seem to be a hot commodity this year, and the recent snowfall here has spurred me into motion on a recent project that I had started in the spring and then had allowed to languish.
I have a 1973 Ariens 2-stage 24" snowblower. And the engine was cooked. I needed to put on another one.
I'm cheap, though, so I didn't want to buy one. Especially not since I had one kicking around...
...one that had lots of power for the purpose...
...one that always started in the insanely cold weather in my hometown of Ottawa...
...one that was sitting around in my garage...
...and my neighbor got into a pissing contest with me because his snowblower had a bigger engine than mine (new 8hp Craftsman to my 27-year-old solid-as-a-rock 5hp Ariens)...
And so I did it. I got out the tapemeasure, and I figured out how I could make it fit. Stretch the snowblower chassis 7" between the drive section and the blower section, weld on some angle iron as motor mounts, and I was all set.
Now, my neighbor concedes defeat. Comfortably.
I have an electric start, 4-cylinder, water-cooled, overhead cam, 2-barrel carbureted, 1.6L snowblower. Coolant taken from the heater core ports on the water pump is circulated through fine copper tubing in the hand grips (no mittens required!) and the discharge chute, which keeps it clear of snow by forming a slippery coat of ice inside. Horsepower, according to 1980 Chevette sales brochures, is about 90.
Sure, it weighs over 400lbs with the battery, but that just gives it more traction on the wheels, and allows it to churn into the biggest and nastiest snowbanks, even without tire chains.
And, unlike the reliable but worn out old Tecumseh Sno-King that it replaced, with just a crack over idle, the snowblower won't bog down when I run through the crap blocking my driveway that the snowplow left behind. It throws slush and ice the same 9 feet or so that it used to throw light powder snow with the old Tecumseh.
It threw first snow on December 30th.
Talking bass, my ass. I'm taking photos of the blower tonight, I'll post them somewhere when I can.
Now, if only I could find some good Grade-8 bolts that will properly fit the shear pin holes on the auger...
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Wonder what he'll be reprogrammed to say?
"IMAGINE A BEOWULF CLUSTER OF ME"?
"HOT NAKED PETRIFIED NATALIE PORTMAN?"
"GOATS***"
assuming anyone ever bought one of those things. I mean, the question is: WHY would you want one?
I think if anyone ever crossed one of these with the hacked furby, it would be **the** most annoying gadget on earth.
...now when I go over to people's houses, they're stupid fucking fish will be saying stupid fucking things to me that only THEY find funny.
You mean instead of saying stupid fucking things that NO ONE finds funny... like they do now?
I gotta admit that hacking those god-awful talking fish trophies is a good idea. Almost as good as hacking the Taco Bell dogs (which are even more annoying than the singing bass IMHO). But buying them pre-made? Where's the fun in that?
What I'd really like to see is a version of the talking fish that was controlled by a remote microphone, and with software that controlled the head and mouth automatically whenever a person was speaking into the microphone. Imagine inviting passers-by to have a conversation with the fish. Pipe the voice through a sound-blaster live first to get some rather fishy voice-effects and we could really have some fun. Hey, I want this as a hands-free telephone!
Why is the universe here? -Well, where else would it be?
I knew I shoulda did this long ago!
I bought one of these when it first became a "hit", I think it was last Christmas (99), or maybe it was later - early last year, anyway.
I had mounted mine to the wall (none too securely), and it fell off - breaking the mouth actuator in the process.
Figuring this was as good of time as any to open it up, and see how it worked, I went ahead, pulled it apart, and took the actuator assembly out of the "skin" - kinda freaky looking, but I found the busted part. A little superglue and some struggling with the skin, and it worked like a champ afterward.
After seeing how simple the thing was, I knew it wouldn't take anything to hook the thing to a computer, and write drivers, etc to control it (I was thinking the parallel port route, or maybe a PIC with a custom serial interface - nothing too fancy) - but at the time, it was just "one of those projects", that I seem to have a million of running in the back of my head. I shelved it, figuring someone would do it sooner or later.
I guess it has been done, to an extent, at least - pretty cool. Since the Boogie Bass came out, others have been available - I have seen a trout, an alligator, a lobster, a shark, a fish with no skin (just bones - for Halloween), and one with a stocking cap for Xmas.
Other cool animatronic animals I have seen are a line of moving "creatures" that perform an action when you press a hidden "under-the-skin" button - I have seen them at toys-r-us.
Never thought when I was a kid that audio-animatronic devices would be sold cheaply. I remember being fascinated by the Chuck E Cheese characters, going to the point of trying to build my own "dancing" robot (I actually got a head working that would "sing" to a radio - built the trigger circuitry for the motor using a Radio Shack 150-in-1 kit!). I loved seeing how they worked, listening to the compressed air pistons, etc.
Now they can be bought at Walgreens...sigh.
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
.
I can see it now. Billy Bob holding his bass up to the pay-phone making
illegal phone calls with pre-recorded phone phreaking tones.
Wow, it would be really funny to make it say #JOKE. Would really freak out somebody on acid. If its waterproof, you can pretend to catch it and make it say #JOKE2.
Just doing my part to speed things along.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Just one more reason to never leave my house, I suppose.