[sdiy] OT: singing bear

[Les Mizzell]

> Anyhow, I was wondering if the mouth movements--basic flapping of the 
> lower jaw, with a vibrato like wavering on sustained notes--are 
> programmed or are they occuring in response to the music (like a 
> kinestetic version of a color organ)?

My bet is that they're using "Teddy Ruxpin" technology here. Remember Teddy?

Teddy used cassettes. Instead of a stereo audio signal, one track was 
audio and the other was a control track that that ran several stepper 
motors inside Teddy that ran his mouth and eyes (for expression). The 
control track was basically (from what I remember) - a rather nasty 
sounding square wave that varied in frequency to manipulate the motors.

I had purchased one of these for my son when they came out, and decided 
it would be a hell of a lot of fun to hack the thing. I took one of 
Teddy's tapes, chopped it all up at spots where Teddy's expression 
changed, and made notes of what chunk did what. I recorded my own "Evil 
Teddy" soundtrack, then sampled the control chunks into an Emulator II 
and "played" the control track back to the audio on a multitrack. Mixed 
the whole thing back down to the correct right-audio/left-control format 
on a cassette, popped it into Teddy and viola, junkie Teddy on some 
serious drugs.

Now that I remember how funny the result was, I wish I still had that 
thing!

I got the idea from Emu - they created a "satanic Teddy" basically doing 
the same thing. They had it sitting in the lobby of their office for 
awhile scaring guests. They finally showed it to the Teddy's creators 
and they almost went into anaphylactic shock! Once they got over it, 
they actually borrow it from Emu for awhile to show in *their* offices.

Weird, huh?


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Les Mizzell