Future Directions

Given the current low level functionality in Big Mouth Billy Bass, there are lots of interesting things we can try. If anyone would like to take one of these tasks on, give me a holler.

  1. Transcribe more funny sayings.We have just begun to scatch the surface of all the funny things that Billy Bass can say. Just imaging the possibilities: your favorite comedians, your least favorite relative, your boss, you name it! If other people choose to hack their Billy Basses like I have, then we could simply trade sound and transcription files. If there is enough interest I could arrange an online archive of such files.
  2. Develop an interface circuit for the photodetector. Currently only the red button can be detected by the computer. I have not yet constructed a satisfactory circuit for the photodetector that comes with Billy Bass. This electric component is probably a photoresistor, probably a cadmium sulfide (CdS) cell. From my measurements, it varies from infinite resistance (no light) to 15 kOhm (extremely bright light). I think a circuit with adjustable sensitivity is the key.
  3. Create or find a flexible ISA bus.One of my goals it to fit the MZ104 and other ISA cards inside the frame of the Bass. I have constructed a flexible ISA/PC104 bus out of ribbon cable. Here you can see the dongle that attaches to the flexible bus. It fits three ISA cards into 1.4 inches of space, and it interfaces to PC-104. I built it myself, but alas it does not work, in fact it's deadly. Right now I am seeking alternatives.
  4. Port the bass software to other platforms.One of the benefits of using Linux is it's hardware neutrality. In theory, the control software could be recompiled to run on Linux PDAs such as the Agenda VR3 or the iPaq or the Yopy. However I don't know anyone who has such a PDA who is also willing to dedicate it to a talking fish! Also it might be possible to compile and run this project in Windows using the Cygwin environment. The tricky part to that may be whether Cygwin can emulate the Open Sound System, the sound driver for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.
  5. Develop a gesture capture program. For Billy Bass to be more believable, we need to control the head and tail realistically. One way to do this is to control those motions by hand, using a program, and have the program remember the control timings. Much like the TIMIT files contain a transcription, another file format could contain gestures.
  6. Add automatic lipsynching. Right now we have to tell the bass when to open its lips--wouldn't it be great if Billy could just know that for himself? There are lots of ways this could be done by triggering off of vowels, plosives and volume. The trick is to get it right under varying degrees of volume and background noise. When this problem is solved then we can create a remotely controlable Bass or a Bass that can be controlled using network teleconferencing software.