Failure Is the Best Option: Putting Alexa in a Singing Bass
Most of the projects I share, and the blogs I write are about finished projects, completed projects, “successful” projects. This blog post is not about one of those projects.
This blog post is about failure.
“Failure” is an inevitable part of the creative experience, especially when working with the iterative design process. Engineering is a field full of major successes, and major failures. I’m talking, wobbly bridge with people on it failure:
Yeah, somebody should have been paying more attention in the resonate frequencies module of their highschool physics class.
That being said, “failure” is normal. It’s bound to happen, and I think that it’s a good thing. I keep defining “failure” in air-quotes because I wanted to emphasize the difference between true failure and making a mistake (failure). True failure isn’t about doing something wrong, it’s about doing nothing at all. True failure is those who are so scared of making mistakes that they don’t do anything. That’s failing. Making mistakes is not failure, making mistakes is how you learn. Learning is moving forward and improving, so I don’t see that as failure at all. With that clarification out of the way, let’s talk about my most recent “failure.” The Big Mouth Billy Bass Alexa.
Flash back to May 2019. I’m just about to graduate highschool and trade-school and I’ve already planned a trip to the Maker Faire: Bay Area as an 18th birthday present to myself. I’m leaving in two weeks, but I just had an idea. What if I put Alexa in a Singing Bass? The thought permeated my brain enough that I decided it would be the subject of my next YouTube video. I ordered a BMBB on Amazon, went to Micro Center to pick up some parts, and began filming.
A week later, and I still hadn’t finished the project. I was absolutely stumped. I had used a Google AIY hat I had been given, and a Raspberry Pi for the brains, microphone, and speaker. I thought it would work great, but apparently Alexa’s Voice API didn’t play with with Google’s hardware. (Who woulda thunk.) Frustrated, disappointed, and out of time, I decided to put the project aside for now, enjoy my trip, and revisit it when I came back.
The trip was amazing and I’ll have to tell that story someday, but when I got back, I had to move into my new apartment for the Summer and start my internship at Garmin. Definitely not complaining, Garmin was awesome, but needless to say, Big Mouth Billy Bass remained alone in a box for the rest of the Summer. Fall came around and I once again got excited to work on the Bass, but I didn’t have money or time to do it, and school was really hard. Scrapped again.
Flash forward to Spring 2020, everything shuts down, the entire world goes into quarantine, and I’ve got a ton of time with nothing to do, since my trip to Ireland was cancelled… I decide to pump out a couple videos… or so I thought. Turns out, working during a pandemic is really hard. Motivation is sparse, and finding people to hold a camera is even more difficult. Once I finished the Tin-Can Telephone video, I was exhausted. For some reason, I made myself get up and work on another project, which brought back the Big Mouth Billy Bass. It was finally going to happen. I was going to buy the new parts, put it all together, and it would work like magic! It was finally time! Or so I thought.
After ordering all the parts I needed, I assembled the Bass… and nothing. Not even a slight head nod. Alexa was working just fine, but the Bass was completely paralyzed and I had no idea why. Frustrated with the project, I gave up. I needed to hit a deadline for the video, and I missed it. The longer I waited, the more elaborate the video became. I kept thinking that I would have to make up for being late with a video by making it super funny, high quality, and perfect for SEO. I put so much pressure on myself that I completely shutdown, and that my friends, was failure. I refused to get up. I was knocked down many times, and I was tired. I didn’t want to work on it anymore, I loathed even the idea of working on the Bass. I stopped making, stopped creating. All because of this stupid rubber fish.
Luckily the story didn’t end there. I managed to make it through the Summer, and with the return of school, my friends came back as well. Two of the most creative friends I have, Donavan and Eugene had just moved into their apartment. I was having dinner with them one night when I had mentioned the bass, and Eugene suggested that I bring it the next morning so he could mess with it. I didn’t see how it could get worse, and I was excited to work on something with friends, so I agreed.
The next morning, I showed up to their apartment with the Bass and all of my tools. We sat down, started fiddling with the code, and within an hour, the Bass was alive and moving. I was overjoyed. Finally, it was done. Finally, it worked. I could die peacefully now. Everything was as it should be.
You want to know what the problem was? The motor controller required a power supply of 9V or above, and I had mistakenly been using a 6V wall wart…
I know. I was facepalming too. All that time and I just hadn’t given it enough power! That’s the last time I’m going to make that mistake (Ah crap, now I’ve jinxed it) Either way, the Bass was working, and I learned a lot from this experience:
I work best when I’m collaborating with friends.
Isolation and Depression don’t work well as ingredients when trying to make a cocktail of Creativity.
My perfectionism kept me from being creative.
And that last one is arguably the most important. The absurd expectations I put on myself ruined the fun of building for the sake of building. I put so much pressure on myself to do it the “right” way, that I just didn’t do anything. The irony is that I published a video about this only a few months prior. It was called Bias Towards Action, and it was all about just getting started, and worrying about quality later. It was better to do, than to worry about doing and do nothing.
So to conclude my little post, I wanted to summarize and leave you with a word of encouragement. Never let mistakes stop you from making them. True failure is not about messing up, it’s about giving up. Mistakes are the best tools to help you learn, and if you lean into those mistakes, you can find some very creative and unexpected outcomes. And lastly, don’t forget to give yourself some slack. There’s a flippin’ pandemic happening at the moment… the world’s upside down right now. The projects can wait, it’s okay if there are delays. Take the time you need to work on it when you feel like it. Don’t let the fun things in life become stressors because of self-imposed deadlines.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. /s
