Mr. Speaker

If the deepest mysteries of Talking Boony are to be discovered, we are going to have to get our facts straight. Post your ammendments or boony-based discoveries on the boony post, or send a mail.

Latest Updates (or skip down to just the facts)

09/05/06
Well, yes, Boony is back from the dead - after having a sleep for 113.7777 days he’s back. And as long as you change the batteries every once-in-a-while he should be back EVERY 113.7777 days!

16/02/06
Boonys around the world fall into silence! Is this the end for Talking Boony?! While our team continues thier tireless boonjaneering efforts, take a moment to visit our homage to Boon - and remember the plastic marketing gimmick that changed our life for ever…

29/01/06
Slow and steady progress on the reverse-boongineering project- It IS possible to wake a boon - I did it by (I think), bridging the missing “S1″ connection - though I think I may have lost a day of Boon now. I also added an audio output connector accross the boony-speaker, so now he’s plugged in to my stereo-ere-o.

Philip N did this cool frequency analysis on the boony blips and found that the magic frequencies are 6476 Hz and 7897 Hz! Nice work!

23/01/06 - Alright! We’ve got a Boonie Authority on board! An insider to help us break the DaBoony Code! He/She has confirmed that Boony has 3 triggers that correspond to “random quotes”, “batting quotes” and “bowling quotes”. Can anyone supply us with the tones for each?!

22/01/06 - Some interesting Boony autopsy news! Our team on the West Coast successfully opened Boony, removed batteries, replaced batteries, probed with electronic testering devices, GOT BOONY TO TALK, replaced boony exoskeleton and created a new breed of talking Boony - Loony Boony. This was done by an electronics professional (don’t try this at home - though I’m going to for sure!)

The Loony Boony now talks regularly outside of game times, and, unfortunately, all bloody night! Loony Boony has been relegated to the linen closet until he learns not to ask for beer at 4 in the morning. At the moment it is unsure weather Loony Boony thinks he is in time for the games. I haven’t heard what he thinks “today’s codeword is” yet.

20/01/06 - Nothing new to report. But I just recieved 2 Boonys with another on the way - One from Brisbane, one from W.A. and one from Sydney. Full steam ahead for boony testing!

Also, I have started trying to get the epoxy blog off the circuit board of my dead boony. It ain’t easy. Apparently you can get it off by heating the epoxy with a small welding flame until it become brittle and falls off. But I only have a cigarette lighter, so its gunna take a while…

18/01/06 - Ben T presents a Boony-revelation!!

I have been able to get my boony to talk when ever i want, although not a true revelation, as we know that he is activated by an audio signal, i downloaded a tone generator program from http://www.nch.com.au/tonegen/

The free trial program works fine. I set it to a “Sweep (log)” “sine wave” signal starting at “8500Hz” stopping at “6500Hz” at a duration of “5000msec.”

That tonegen program was the one I was using to interrogate Boony before the series started. I’m interested to know if Ben T’s method works outside of game times.

Also I noticed that in the download section on the Boonanaza site there is a link to a “Desktop Boony” that is supposedly “coming soon” - could this be a program to trigger Boony, after the season is over?

17/01/06 - I called up the “Boony team” via Fosters, and learnt some new and interesting boon-truths. For one thing, they seemed to be getting a lot of people trying to put Boony too close to the TV, and they weren’t working. So try moving Boony back if you’re having troubles.

Also, and this is pretty snazzy,… Apparently not all Boonys are created equal! Now, I don’t know if they were just trying to get me off their back, but I was told first that the Boonys are “individually programmed”, which was then changed later in the conversation to “If you have 6 Boonys, they could all have come from different batches”.

So I don’t know if that is just an excuse for dodgy Boonys, but they reckon that different Boonys will react to different signals. I also think that maybe they were trying to give me the slip here, because when they said “signals” I said “you mean those blip-blips?” and they said “Well, boony can mistake those sounds for signals and sometimes talks”… I might call them again later and press for more clues!

Boony Facts:

• Boony said his first words sometime before the first game on the 13/01/06
• This was timer-based, and he spoke regardless of weather the TV was on or not.
• Boony has an internal timer that knows the start and end times of all the game in the series. About an hour before the match he will announce “Get me a VB, the crickets about to start”
• Boonys are programmed with the schedules of all the matches of the one day series - during each match “talk windows” will open up (one during each innings) which allow Talking Boony to react to the blip-blip tones that play when the VB logo shows up.[talk to me boon, boonie authority]
• Boonys will be powered-down during non-talk windows and outside of games to conserve batteries for the length of the series
• Playing the “blip-blip” tones at Boony during game times will trigger him to say something [Christina] during a “talk window”
• Playing the “blip-blip” tones at Boony outside of game times will NOT trigger him to say something [Gaz]
• Although the talk window is a fixed length, continually playing the tone to Boony will only work for a random amount of time. Then you have to give him a rest
• Some Boonys don’t seem to react to the “blip-blips” at all - They can be “tempremental” so try moving your boony around to find the sweet-spot - and try playing the tones to him.
• There are 3 different triggers, each with a group of phrase words attached. Boonie will say a random phrase out of the group depending on which trigger is activated. One group relates to bowling, another to batting and the final group is random. So depending on whether the replay is focusing on batting or bowling, usually the trigger activated will say something in line with what you are seeing and hence create the feeling that boonie is commentating. [boonie authority]
• Non-blip-reacting Boonys will only speak about once an hour.
• Boony will not speak outside of game times (unless you perform some electronic trickery on the poor fellow)
• Although he might talk without the TV on, depriving Boony of cricket is unfair and possibly cruel.[Alan]

Electronic-y:

• UPDATE: resident guru Tim has SMASHED the Boony code and is working on a mod chip to have Boony talkin’ on demand.
• WARNING! unless you REALLY know what you are doing, tinkering with Boony WILL KILL HIM!
• Is anyone an electronics wiz and can tell us more? - I’ve included big pictures of the circuit boards as links from the lil’ pictures of the circuit board on the boony post.
• Phillip Molly Malone reports on the hidden 5th chip: It must have a timer which is permanently connected to battery and the the chip under the blob of epoxy is the heart of it possibly a “pic” chip or a more elaborate microcontroller.
• OR, under the epoxy is Boonys voice box - as there is an EEPROM controller chip visible on the board
• A spectrum analysis of the magic beep shows that the magic frequencies seen to be 6476 Hz and 7897 Hz. If we assume Boonie is limited by the watch crystal this figure may have a tolerance of several 100 ppm. [Philip N]
• Jase said that his Boony worked again for the game after removing the batteries, but never again
• The batteries of a dead Boony (one that had NEVER worked) were changed, and boony then worked as normal
• It is possible to trigger Boony during a talk window by making a connection accross the circuit board
• It is possible to wake Boony on non-game days (not quite sure how I did it! See the comments…) - but Boony will think its the next game, and ultimately will pass away prematurely

Unknown:

• Can we force a power-up, so our Boonys may live on for all eternity?