Plug Teddy into your computer with a USB cable and a drive wil appear called NO_NAME. On that drive is a folder called Books, and in that folder are all the story files, in .bin format.
intro.bin is the file that plays when Teddy starts up. It's the one where he sings "Come Dream with Me Tonight.." I replaced mine with a short recording that says "Hi Billie and Daisy! Would you like to hear a story?"
There are 10 story files, but stories 4-10 are "locked" -- the manufacturers added these as a paid in-app purchase. Worlds of Wonder has long since gone out of business, so we couldn't figure out any way to unlock these stories. But we can access and replace the first three, which were included with the original purchase.
So, we have three spaces for stories: Story01.bin, Story02.bin, and Story03.bin. Each of these stories can be pretty long -- the original stories are close to 20 minutes in length so there's plenty of space. I kept mine to about 5 minutes.
Creating Content
For the audio recordings for this project, I wanted to use voices that my baby nieces will recognize and love. I got their grandparents to send me recordings of about 5 minutes long, reading stories and nursery rhymes the kids will love.
My mom has an iPhone, so I asked her to make her recording using the Voice Memos app. After recording she clicked the "share" button in the app, and emailed me the audio file she created.
Their Australian Grandpa couldn't think of what to read, so I used ChatGPT to write a personalized story using my nieces' names, and telling all about the animals in Australia. Here's the prompt I used:
Please write me a rhyming 800 word story in the style of Mother Goose about Australian animals who become friends with little girls named Daisy and Billie.
ChatGPT did not let me down! Here are the first two paragraphs of this delightful tale:
In a land Down Under, where kangaroos hop,
And kookaburras laugh atop a gum tree's top,
Lived creatures unique, full of life and zest,
In a tale of friendship, we're about to invest.
Daisy and Billie were two little mates,
With hearts full of joy, they'd frolic in fates,
Through the bushland they wandered, their spirits so free,
Meeting critters and creatures, as happy as could be.
Converting Audio Files
This project requires the audio files to be in 16 bit WAV file format. I used Audacity, a free audio editing program, to convert the files.
Here's a complete guide on how to get the files into the correct format: Convert Sound Files in Audacity
I still had some trouble getting all the correct boxes checked - my audio files were just not working for some reason. So as a workaround, I stared with a known good 16-bit audio WAV file project, and opened my voice recording directly into that project. Then when I exported, the project already had the correct settings.
Here's a working .wav file to use as a starting point.
Save your files as Intro.wav, Story01.wav, etc - this will make it easier to keep everything straight in the next few steps.
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