El Poisson Billy

El Poisson is yet another hacked Big Mouth Billy Bass. It was a little contribution to Moorea's 2023 music video "Un effort". This particular hack features a Bluetooth audio sink and motor control via bluetooth. The python GUI is easy to use and can even connect to Ableton via a virtual MIDI interface, so that the fish's movements can be programmed as a MIDI track.

Features

• ESP32 configured as bluetooth audio sink with additional serial port profile (SPP) for control.
• Teensy Audio Shield Rev D for high-quality audio output.
• H-bridge L293D for efficient motor control.
• Python GUI for easy interaction with the device.

Hardware

Components

• Billy the Bass
• ESP32-DevKitC (https://www.espressif.com/en/products/devkits/esp32-devkitc/overview)
• Teensy Audio Shield Rev D (https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy3_audio.html)
• H-bridge L293D (https://www.st.com/en/motor-drivers/l293d.html)

Schematic

Software

Python GUI

You can set up the python app with:

python3 -m venv venv
. venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -r requirements.txt

python -m gui

Firmware

The firmware is based on the following examples from ESP-IDF:

• https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/tree/v5.1.1/examples/bluetooth/bluedroid/classic_bt/a2dp_sink
• https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/blob/v5.1.1/examples/bluetooth/bluedroid/classic_bt/bt_spp_acceptor

Please use ESP-IDF v5.1.1 to build the firmware.

To flash a binary release, use (for example):

pip install esptool==4.6.2
esptool.py write_flash 0x10000 el-poisson-billy-0.1.0.bin

References

Other Billy Bass projects

• https://maker.pro/arduino/projects/how-to-animate-billy-bass-with-bluetooth-audio-source
• https://www.instructables.com/Animate-a-Billy-Bass-Mouth-With-Any-Audio-Source/
• https://www.hackster.io/news/this-mod-turns-big-mouth-billy-bass-into-an-arduino-controlled-platform-for-shenanigans-cac985a04b47
• https://os.mbed.com/cookbook/Big-Mouth-Billy-Bass
• https://gist.github.com/jamesbulpin/f3b20833ab0bf035ae8fd3a69405b222
• https://github.com/TensorFlux/BTBillyBass

Mouth synchronization

• https://mittalparveen652.medium.com/face-eye-and-mouth-detection-with-python-458f2a028674
• https://hackprojects.wordpress.com/tutorials/opencv-python-tutorials/opencv-mouth-detection-using-haar-cascades/
• https://github.com/mauckc/mouth-open
• https://github.com/opencv/opencv/tree/master/data/haarcascades
• https://github.com/peterbraden/node-opencv/blob/master/data/haarcascade_mcs_mouth.xml
• https://github.com/DanielSWolf/rhubarb-lip-sync

Others

• PyQt and OpenCV: https://gist.github.com/docPhil99/ca4da12c9d6f29b9cea137b617c7b8b1

KiCad symbols and footprints

• ESP32-DevKitC: https://github.com/espressif/kicad-libraries
• Teensy Audio Shield Rev D: https://forum.pjrc.com/threads/65435