Nerd Craft: Star Trek Tribble - Initial Plans

Trouble with Tribbles

Update
You can buy your own from ThinkGeek for less than $20!

One of my favorite Star Trek TOS episodes is The Trouble with Tribbles. A Tribble is a small, soft, furry and gentle asexual animal that produces a soothing purring sound. That is, unless you are a Klingon. Mortal enemies of all Klingons, a tribble screams when they encounter a Klingon. The Klingon acts like a frightened child.

Anyway, I've always wanted a replica tribble. But not just some furry stuffed animal. I want one that screams, purrs and otherwise sounds like a tribble. Technology has finally caught up with my wishes and my pocketbook!





Unfortunately, we cannot genetically engineer pets, at least not tribbles. Glowing fish aren't my thing. I'll have to make a tribble puppet of some sort.

Here are the behaviors I want my tribble to express:

• Purrs when petted or held
• Screams at Klingons

And the ones that I'll have to leave until I get my genetic engineering chemistry set:

• Consumes mass quantities of food
• Procreates
• Moves around

What I'll need:

• Shaggy faux fur cloth for the pelt
• Polyfill for stuffing
• A couple of recordable sound chips for gift cards
• A tilt switch
• A pressure/contact switch

The faux fur and polyfill shouldn't be too hard to get at either a craft store or somewhere online. A simple baseball style pattern (two strips of fabric in the shape of teardrops attached with a neck) but elongated. 

Sound chips are available online. One will record and playback the purr, the other the scream.

Klingon agents and Tribbles don't get along

What's the tilt switch for? A Klingon detector isn't available so I'll fake it. If you pick up the tribble and keep it level it will just purr. If you hold it a steep angle, the tilt switch will disable the purr and activate the scream chip.

A simple tilt switch can be made with a small circuit board, a couple of stiff wire contacts, a metallic ball bearing, and a short tube. 

Most definitely not a Klingon

The pressure switch might be a bit trickier. I'll need something that doesn't require a lot of pressure, but just enough that the tribble doesn't randomly purr and run down the battery.