Gutting the fish

Prepping a Big Mouth Billy Bass is no more difficult than cleaning a real fish.

First - get over attacking this toy with a wire cutters. If you mess it up, buy a new one. You can get a big mouth billy bass at GoodWill for $5. I've went through two before I got everything to work right.

My first thought was to use the base of the fish as the enclosure for the electronics. This would have been fun except for my issues with power. When I decided to go with an ATX power supply, I required a larger box. If you're an electronics genius with a specialty in small power supplies, I'd welcome your thoughts.

This first image shows the result of gutting the box. It's really that easy - take the screws out of the back of the fish, find the circuit board and clip all the leads as close to the board as possible. Throw away the board.

There are five sets of wires. The wires coming out of the middle of the enclosure are obviously for the fish motors. There is also a switch and photo-resistor with two wires apiece.

At this point, you'll need to decide how to mount the fish. I have access to woodworking tools, so I chose to entirely remove the fish from the base and build something new. Here's what I've done:

The lower box contains the power supply and circuitry. The tower displays the fish and is topped with a USB webcam.

Also visible in this picture is a switch plate with three SPST switches and a voltage meter. I'll use these for something later.