Side Project - Beaker Muppet

[Vigo]

Anyone want to take a guess at what I am making? I think a few of you might get it right away.

[Louis Tully]

.

[danny_galaga]

Anyone want to take a guess at what I am making? I think a few of you might get it right away.

  ?

+1. The pink glove and the cut out in the PVC are dead give aways. Looking like a cool project Vigo (",)

[lordnacho]

if true then awesome else wait longer

[Vigo]

Yep! That's what I am workin' on. 

I'm trying to make a somewhat true to life Beaker puppet, I've had this project on the back burner for a while. Been scrambling to get it done for another contest I want to enter it in.

Here is the fun twist though. I want to be able to make it hand operated, but I also want it to be animatronic. Nothing complex, but I have a singing christmas tree that was begging to be hacked.

So far, he is a naked, but functional head. Tonight I plan on skinning him and adding his collar. Here is a video I took last night of his singing abilities. Beaker responds well to Hip-Hip. I'll have to try Jackie Wilson next. 

[BadMouth]

I can see rapping beaker going viral. 

[Vigo]

  Maybe it will when I complete the project. I can stare at that singing PVC pipe for hours... 

[ChadTower]

Are you doing that by hand or is the tree's sync ability really that good?

[Vigo]

The tree sync is really that good..........with that song. Other songs it often confuses instruments and with voice and will falsely set off the mouth. It does only trigger with a certain tone range, but music is very hit and miss with how well it syncs with vocals only. I have to cherry pick my music for it.

The thing that worries me, and I haven't tested it yet, is that beaker's voice might be too high pitched to pick up on the mouth. If that is the case, I might have to drop in a "lip-sync" audio file and play timed with his voice. I am really hoping the voice logic is good enough to not need to.

I am still incorporating manual mouth movement with a rod. In the picture where I am holding the motor, you see a white tube. That is a sleeve to guide a rod to push up on the motor by hand.

[saint]

I can see rapping beaker going viral. 

[Howard_Casto]

I can beat that one... they actually stole the idea from this one:

[ChadTower]

[CoryBee]

+3030 Points for deltron

[yotsuya]

May I be so bold as to ask WHY you are building a motorized Beaker? Shouldn't you be crafting an Urkel muppet?

[spoot]

"I'll miss the family reunion this year........."

That's awesome.

[Ginsu Victim]

My favorite is still....

[ChadTower]

[danny_galaga]

The thing that worries me, and I haven't tested it yet, is that beaker's voice might be too high pitched to pick up on the mouth. If that is the case, I might have to drop in a "lip-sync" audio file and play timed with his voice. I am really hoping the voice logic is good enough to not need to.

I hope the tape doesn't get tangled up 

[ChadTower]

Time to bust out the Teddy Ruxpin tapes.


Oh no!  Dude!  Idea!  This is going to happen someplace in my gameroom.  Must, has to... I need to get a couple of those trees and put them up with this:

[ark_ader]

Take off, eh.

[ChadTower]

Man, I would pay so much to have those two guys' voices on separate tracks for stuff like this. 

[Vigo]

Oh no!  Dude!  Idea!  This is going to happen someplace in my gameroom.  Must, has to... I need to get a couple of those trees and put them up with this:

Man, I would pay so much to have those two guys' voices on separate tracks for stuff like this. 

I think that might be easy enough to do. I don't think they talked over each other too much. I would be just snipping out bob and doug's voices and separating them using something like Sony Sound forge.

If i have some time, I'll be sure to have Beaker test this out. Oh yeah, did I mention Beaker is done?

[ChadTower]

That is awesome.   

I've always wanted to sit down and really listen to the album with an ear for how often they talk over each other.  I imagine it could be faked in the parts where they are both talking - both mouths would be moving, less in sync with the speech, but probably moving enough that most would not notice. 

[Howard_Casto]

awesome sauce!

Ok now we need a vid....

Try syncing him to this:

[Vigo]

Thanks guys!

Howard, no way! Haha that is just gonna confuse poor Beaker! I did sync him to the Beaker ode to joy. You can see that video on my instructable page:






http://www.instructables.com/id/Animatronic-Automatic-Singing-Beaker-bot/

If you are feeling up to creating an account or already have one, you can feel free to vote for me as well. I think I am already a shoe-in to make the finalist group, so it is not a big deal. I have only posted my instructable on Monday and I already have the second highest viewership on the contest, second to a fraggle that has been posted over a month.

[Vigo]

May I be so bold as to ask WHY you are building a motorized Beaker? Shouldn't you be crafting an Urkel muppet?

Because there already is a talking urkel.

[Howard_Casto]

Woke up this morning to read my instructable newsletter and guess who's on it?

You've hit the big time Vigo... BIG TIME.





You know, beakers voice is really high pitched.  If there is some sort of adjustment on the dougie turning the sensitivity waaay down might make it possible to sync to musical pieces as well. 

[BadMouth]

It doesn't even have to move to make me laugh. 

[Vigo]

Woke up this morning to read my instructable newsletter as guess who's on it?

You've hit the big time Vigo... BIG TIME.

You know, beakers voice is really high pitched.  If there is some sort of adjustment on the dougie turning the sensitivity waaay down might make it possible to sync to musical pieces as well.

Thanks Howard! I've been experimenting with sound quite a bit on beaker. There is no sensitivity adjustment, but it will adjust when I change the volume on my MP3 Player. I also found that if I fiddle with the EQ and boost the range of the voice singing I have better results.

I also have been experimenting with changing the audio itself. I have found a number of songs on soundcloud where they extracted the voice from the rest of the song. I will put the voice on the left channel, and a mono version of the song on the right channel, then I split the audio and plug beaker into the left and play the music into the right. Beaker turns out dead accurate with voice. I just wish I knew how exactly to extract voice myself as I want him to be my main Christmas/Halloween prop and sing appropriate songs without any false triggers.

It doesn't even have to move to make me laugh. 

  Me too. When I was down on the ground making test videos for Beaker, I was literally ROTFLing multiple times. Muppets are pure magic.

[shrunkenmaster]

 I just wish I knew how exactly to extract voice myself as I want him to be my main Christmas/Halloween prop and sing appropriate songs without any false triggers.

Only accurate way is using phase cancellation, but you'll need the 'vocal' version of the track (ie. the music AND the vocal), plus the instrumental. When they're both played at the same time with the phase of one inverted, then the similar frequencies are cancelled out, giving you the accapella, which you can then record. It's still hit and miss for a load of reasons though. Otherwise, super-harsh EQ is your best choice, but far from perfect! Loads of stuff online about this, just google 'accapella extraction' or similar. Hope that helps, great project!

[ChadTower]

Have you tried looking on Jammit?  More and more artists are releasing isolated tracks onto Jammit.  You might just find what you're looking for there without all the effort.

[Howard_Casto]

It's a little late for this, but for Halloween props I use a talking boris skull.  The motor is really weak but what is nice about it is it has all these voice changer effects and if you set it to "robot"  it'll only respond to vocals in most musical pieces.  Of course I clip the speaker so you don't actually hear the robot voice and use the mp3 player to play the music via a splitter. 

Your other option is to open up source-forge and manually make a track. Just like my boris, you would clip the dougie speaker and use your own on the right channel.  The left channel which you would use for mouth movement, could just have a series of tones. 

I've done it that way before, but it's a colossal pain in the butt in terms of the amount of work you have to do. 

[ChadTower]

I've seen some of the props made from Boris skulls.  Cool stuff.  Too bad they're so hard to come by now.

[mcseforsale]

subscribed...best thing I've seen today.

AJ

[Vigo]

Thanks all!

I'm surprised that there isn't a good audio servo board out there. I see there is the scary terry kit, but that is about $50 after shipping. I' surprised nobody has released a simpler < $20 board. Thanks for the boris skull tip, I didn't know about them. I will keep my eyes peeled at the thrift stores.

Have you tried looking on Jammit? 

Cool site, library is a bit weak but it looks to be growing. I'll keep my eyes on it.

 I just wish I knew how exactly to extract voice myself as I want him to be my main Christmas/Halloween prop and sing appropriate songs without any false triggers.

Only accurate way is using phase cancellation, but you'll need the 'vocal' version of the track (ie. the music AND the vocal), plus the instrumental. When they're both played at the same time with the phase of one inverted, then the similar frequencies are cancelled out, giving you the accapella, which you can then record. It's still hit and miss for a load of reasons though. Otherwise, super-harsh EQ is your best choice, but far from perfect! Loads of stuff online about this, just google 'accapella extraction' or similar. Hope that helps, great project!

Thanks! I'll try this method.

Of course, I probably can just record myself singing along to the song and sync that with the music. I would have to make sure that channel only gets routed through Beaker and remains unheard. I have an awful voice, and it makes me cringe just listening to myself sing. I don't know what effects it would have on others.