Have you been watching the 2006 Ashes Cricket series? If so,
you are unlikely to have missed the TV advertising promotion of
“Boonanza” and the “Battle of the Tashes”. The idea is that you
purchase two figurines of David Boon and Ian Botham, set them up
in front of your TV and they will then make comments during the
televised cricket matches. So how do they do it?
The technical story of
By LEO SIMPSON
siliconchip.com.au
January 2007 87
T
his must be one of the greatest
marketing ploys of all time. You
go and buy a couple of “slabs” of
VB (Victoria Bitter beer for the uninitiated) and this gives you the codes you
need to buy a pair of plastic figurines
of popular ex-cricketers David Boon
and Ian Botham.
Set up in the room where you watch
television, these will then make loud
comments pertaining to cricket and
VB. In other words, you pay money
to buy a pair of dolls that will then
advertise beer!
There’s even a web-site (www.boonanza.com.au) to promote the promotion and newsgroups have sprung up
to log Boony’s and Beefy’s (Botham’s)
comments and remarks. Their remarks
are apparently spontaneous and they
do interact. For example, if Boony
asks Beefy to “Throw me a VB”, Beefy
answers, “Nah, you’ll only drop it”.
We saw a press story on these
figurines which indicated that the
figurines were reacting to data signals
sent during the TV broadcasts using a
proprietary technique developed by US
company Veil Interactive Technologies
Inc. (www.veilinteractive.com)
“Very interesting,” we thought – and
we set out to find out more.
Our first step was to contact the Nine
network to see if they would give us the
inside story on this technology – but we
could not get any comment.
So we did the logical thing: obtain a
pair of figurines. But no, we didn’t get
them from the local liquor shop – we
already had enough VB! Instead,
we purchased ours on eBay.
Well there is more than one
way to skin a cat so we thought we
would observe the TV screen when
ever Boony or Beefy was moved to
make a comment. This would give
the clues to the signal being used
in the Veil Technology method and
we could even use our 200MHz digital
scope to analyse the recorded signal.
The scope can display any line of a
TV frame and so it should be an
easy matter to recognise a data
stream. Possibly we could
even duplicate the signal and
send it to Boony to get him
to speak.
In more detail, the “veil”
in Veil Technolgy stands for
“video encoded invisible
light” and we thought that
this might also be a useful
clue as to how the data signal
88 Silicon Chip
might be incorporated into the TV picture. So perhaps the signal is modulated
straight into the picture and not in the
blanking interval and is done in such
a way that it is invisible to the normal
viewer.
After watching many hours of the
second Ashes cricket match in Adelaide (all done in the interests of
science, of course), we came to the
conclusion that a “veil” was indeed
being rapidly wiped across the whole
screen at the beginning and end of each
action replay in the match broadcast.
These wipes are very rapid and consist
of three of four diagonal white stripes
of differing widths – presumably 100%
peak video modulation and thus most
readily picked up via any optical sensor within the figurines. Was this the
method being used?
What a great scheme! Presumably the
Nine Network could send a different
data stream each time there was an action replay and Boony and Beefy could
then make comments as to whether
someone was out, whether it was great
bowling and so on. Well that was the
theory but in practice Boony and Beefy
never responded to these great cricket
moments. In fact, their remarks never
seemed to relate to the game or the
picture on-screen. Furthermore, they
Boony and
Beefy. They
talk to each
other – but
is there a TV
trigger?
seemed to make comments just as frequently if the TV was off!
So what was going on? Was this a
likely explanation for Veil Technology
and was it not being used during the
Adelaide Test? Or is something entirely
different going on?
It was time to take the screwdriver
to these locquacious little loudmouths!
And they didn’t protest one little bit.
Upturning the base of the figurine
reveals one small screw which retains
the lid of the battery compartment
which holds three AA cells. Another
four screws retain the base of the green
plastic pedestal. Inside is a small blue
PC board measuring about 40 x 40mm
and an 8W loudspeaker about 30mm
in diameter.
Components on top of the PC board
include a button cell (presumably for
memory backup when the AA cells are
flat or being replaced), a watch crystal
(at 32kHz?), two electrolytic capacitors,
a momentary contact switch and what
appears to be a 455kHz ceramic resonator (marked 455E). Significantly, there
is what appears to be a 3-lead infrared
receiver/decoder chip (similar to that
used in our infrared Remote Control
Extender project featured in the October 2006 issue) and a companion clear
LED – presumably also an infrared
emitter.
These two infrared components “look out” through the dark
infrared filter window on the
side the base – so the figurines
can talk with one another.
On the other side of the
PC board is a host of surface-mount components
which evidently include a
microcontroller, amplifier circuitry and so on. Also present
is another momentary contact
switch (used in production
setup perhaps?). Incidentally,
this board is quite different in
component count to those used
in Boony for the 2005 Ashes
series. Some details of
this previous Boony are
to be found on a number
of newsgroups. One
other piece of evidence
is that our Boony’s
PC board was labelled
“Ocean Unicorn Ver A
Jul 11 06”.
Ocean Unicorn, as
far as we can ascertain,
is a small Hong-Kong
siliconchip.com.au
The only way (at least that we can
see in our Boony and Beefy figurines)
for the two to communicate with the
outside world is via a small infrared
window moulded into their bases.
This was further borne out when we
disassembled both and found what
was lurking behind those windows. . .
It’s an infared receiver, with an
infrared LED alongside, (seen here
right in the front centre of the PC
board). There’s no microphone here,
so it’s not picking up audio signals,
as has been suggested on various
websites. (Incidentally, last season’s
Boony did have a microphone).
No great surprises on the underside of
the PC board either! The black blobs
hide the CPU and presumably some
form of ROM, while other devices
of interest have had their markings
removed. You can also see the small
8W speaker up inside the base of the
figurine in this shot.
based electronics design house/manufacturer.
So what are our conclusions? Based
on the fact that the main sensor appears
to be an infrared receiver/decoder, the
figurines seem unlikely to be able to
respond to any data embedded in the
TV pictures being broadcast during
cricket matches or at any other time.
This seems borne out by the fact that
the figurines never sounded at critical
times and could just as easily sound
when the TV was off. Nor do the instructions accompanying the figurines
make any mention of them being
placed near a TV set. So much for Veil
Technology in this particular case.
The remarks made by Boony and
Beefy are probably in response to a
time/date counter in the microcontroller – hence the particular date code on
the PC board and the need for a backup
battery which would be necessary to
maintain time-keeping.
So if you have been intrigued by the
“Battle of the Tashes” and “Boonanza”,
you probably should not spend too
much more time wondering how it
is done.
However, you cannot help admiring what must be one of the greatest
marketing ploys ever. Not that we were
taken in by it for a minute.
After all that, I am feeling pretty
thirsty. I wonder if there is any cold
VB left in the fridge?
SC
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January 2007 89
