Building A Better Big Mouth Billy Bass

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January 15, 2001 (6:11 AM EST)

Some people hear a shellacked fish warble "Take Me to the River" and ask why. Others ask, why not? Why not "Who Let the Dogs Out" or an aria from Carmen? Clever and curious, these folks are taking apart our favorite toys and putting them back together in unexpected ways.

And as more sophisticated electronic toys come to market, the curious get curiouser and the temptation to tinker grows.

Take the Boogie Bass. Please. This motion-activated mounted fish flaps its head and tail, moves its giant fish lips, and cracks wise with a set of one-liners whenever anyone walks by. It also sings a parody of "Pretty Woman." But this didn't make Marty Vona bust a gut as hard as he'd like. So to increase the hilarity factor, Vona put his academic research in precision motion control to use. He reprogrammed his Boogie Bass to mouth "pork" instead. It took the 23-year-old MIT graduate student almost 60 hours, including time spent updating his Web page.

Vona has posted details on how to modify the sound and movements of Boogie Bass, including schematics and source code at http://www.ai.mit.edu/~vona/bass/bass.html. And he has obtained two other talking fish, Cool Catfish and the hugely popular Big Mouth Billy Bass, both from Gemmy Industries Inc., Irving, Texas. Instructions for the alteration of these fish may be posted on Vona's site as soon as this week.

He said has not heard from Telebrands Corp., the Fairfield, N.J., maker of Boogie Bass.

"I do hope they view this work favorably, and I hope that the only effect it has is to increase the demand for their product," Vona said.

Telebrands, which recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, could not be reached. Executives at Gemmy Industries were traveling overseas and unavailable for comment.

What drives a man to disassemble a talking fish and make it say "pork?"

"We live in an increasingly complex artificial world," Vona said. "Most of us are surrounded by machines whose operation we do not understand. We want to empower people with knowledge and tools so that they can repair and improve the objects that surround them and construct new objects that are the products of their own imagination. This is hacking in the original sense of the word."

He said his goals are strictly benevolent.

Refurbishing Furby

While motorized fish are hot right now, some traditionalists remain enthralled by Tiger Electronics Ltd.'s Furby. Wide-eyed and furry, the battery-operated creatures look like the progeny of Robin Williams and a horned owl. They pose some difficult challenges for hackers since the two chips that control movement and sound are virtually impossible to access, let alone modify. The manufacturer, attempting to thwart competitors, has encased the chips in an impenetrable black resin.

In November, Peter van der Linden, author of several book on computer programming, awarded a $250 prize to a man who gained access to Furby's hardware by replacing the original chips and circuit board. Once assembled and installed, the upgrade kit enables users to play their own WAV files and custom-code Furby personalities. The kit is now available for $65 at The Furby Upgrade Store http://www.canada-shops.com/stores/furbyupgrade/. Installation takes approximately four hours.

Another $250 awaits the first person who modifies the software using Java so that Furby can be reprogrammed to emit arbitrary speech.

Van der Linden has said he hopes to encourage graduate students, professional engineers, and others who have time and talent.

"This is a prize to encourage progress, of the kind that was often staked in the early days of aviation," he said. "If Furby could be reprogrammed by its users, it would become a much more interesting and educational device. Instead of listening to your Furby talk Furbish, you could play chess with it. Instead of pressing your Furby's beak, you could have it announce your e-mail or calendar appointments. It doesn't really matter, the point is to add function and beauty, to create individual conceptual art from mass-produced ephemera."

Try this at home

A number of Usenet groups and websites support toy hacking and reverse engineering. To hack a fish, one might begin at http://www.howstuffworks.com/singing-fish.html. Digital Demise (http://www.digitaldemise.com) is a site where techies can share information and perhaps refuge from a world of conformists. The site's mission statement says "...if we withheld our knowledge, if we did not strive to improve upon all things around us, the world would become a very stale place."

And no one cares for stale fish.

Cora Nucci is a New York-based freelancer and can be reached at cnucci@nyc.rr.com