Yorick, a Twitter Narrating Talking Skull

'Alas poor Yorick. He talks way too much.'

Yorick is a interactive, Twitter-narrating skull. Powered by a RasPi and Arduino to gather streaming tweets from Twitter, then using Google's text-to-speech, turns the tweets people send to him (by mentioning @wedurick) for a chattering addition to Halloween.

[Instrucables does not allow for embedded Livestream videos, but you can see some samples on the blog of wedü, the digital marketing agency Yorick calls home.]

To Play with Yorick
When active, Yorick's live streaming camera can be seen on Livestream at https://new.livestream.com/accounts/5723504/wedurickLIVE.

Once viewing, send a tweet to @wedurick by mentioning him. He's a fan of a good #skelepun for those with a funny bone.

After a slight delay for the stream, you'll see your tweet narrated by your new undead friend.

I’m ashamed to admit it, but we gave Yorick the ability to ‘Rick Roll’ with a rather convincing rendition of Rick Astley’s classic. Tweet him the hashtag #rickroll to hear for yourself.

A common trick with Google translate, Google Beatboxing was also added for users who tweet the #beatbox hashtag to @wedurick and use Google ‘Beatbox Code’ such as:

“@wedurick #beatbox pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk”