Barbie Island Princess Rosella Karaoke Styling Head

[oogmizie]

Hi!  I'm very new to circuitbending, having only tried my hand at a few TI and Vtech devices.  I found this toy today and I was wondering if anyone has had luck with it;  I'm dying to work it because its jaw moves in time with the music, which I find fantastically creepy..

I couldn't find any bends on the circuitboard so I thought, maybe I can run the sound through an LFO made with a 555 timer IC?  I had some luck once with a schematic from casperelectronics.com (the last image above).

Would this work?  Are 4 AA batteries functionally the same as 4 C, since they're each 1.5V?  Would I need to find a pitch adjustment on the circuit, as indicated in the schematic (C) for the speak 'n' spell?

Thanks...

[Gordonjcp]

The whole thing is incredibly creepy.

4 C-size batteries will provide a lot more current than 4 AA-size batteries, but otherwise it's all six volts.

It's interesting that there are things like "mouth open" and "mouth closed" marked on the PCB.  You could probably gut the controller and use it with a homebrewed one to control the creepy-ass freak over MIDI, but that's just too horrible to think about right now.  Jeez, if the eyes moved too I don't think I'd ever sleep again.

What does the pad marked "OSC" do?

[ne7]

u could just wire a jack into the mic pads and play keyboard thru it god your both right its WELL creepy haha

[oogmizie]

thanks for your replies...!
Gordonjcp the OSC button does in fact bend the pitch (faster when wired to A2 if i recall correctly, and slower when wired to the contact beneath it). The jaw speeds or slows correspondingly..

I decided to house her in an old detachable speaker... unfortunately, I'd already drilled some holes for the buttons of a different PCB which I subsequently fried, so the housing is really shoddy... I'm terrible with glue...

I'd like to throw in some different toys - if I wire them all to the same speaker, they'll compete right?  Is there an easy way to get them running at the same volume?

[Gordonjcp]

Get some nice big panel lights to fit in those holes.  If you can't find an LED big enough, go to your local caravan shop or vehicle electrics place and buy some truck lights.  You can replace the bulb with an LED for power saving and have a nice big lens.

If you want to combine several toys into one speaker, you'll need to modify them to have a line out which has been discussed here many many times, and some sort of mixer and amplifier for the speaker.  Again, a quick poke about the forum ought to reveal some suitable projects.

(edit - nice to see you've done her hair too - you've got some talent there...)

[oogmizie]

She says "Thank you... for making me look sooo glamorous!" 

Well this project is starting to bother me...so I think I'm going to just shelve it for a while.
If anyone's curious to hear how it actually sounds, I put up a YouTube video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyly2St7rQQ&feature=channel_page.