January 27, 2019

How To Hack Alexa (Echo Dot) into Big Mouth Billy Bass

Alexa is fun and all, but combining her with animatronics such as the Big Mouth Billy Bass creates a much larger and weirder personality! In this post I'll walk you through how to make an Alexa device out of a Billy Bass toy. This isn't an original idea (kudos to Brian Kane for coming up with this project), but I've tried to make the steps as simple as possible.



Do It Yourself 

Tools: Soldering Iron, Hot Glue Gun, Torx Screwdriver, Philips Screwdriver

Materials:

Billy Bass in the Toronto Tool Library surgery room.
  1. Big Mouth Billy Bass*
  2. Echo Dot 2nd Generation
  3. Arduino Uno
  4. Arduino Motor Driver Shield
  5. LM386 Amplifier 
  6. 3.5mm Audio Cable  
  7. At least 4x C Cell Batteries 
*This Billy Bass seems closest to mine, any should work but some may contain only two motors 
  

Billy Bass Tear-down