Get in!!!

Just got 3 more furbies off of eBay!!

YES!!!

I lost out on 2 but I won 2. Three more to go – exciting stuff eh!

eBay

There’s some furbies for sale on eBay and I’m currently bidding for 7. Keep everything crossed!

Cable trace

With the help of the circuit diagram and the stripped furby, I think I’ve managed to isolate the wires to the ir sensors which are on the larger block on the left in the photo below. The wires from the speaker are a bit harder coz they’re red, orange, black and brown so they could be in the same block or the one on the right….or even in a smaller block on the other side of the furby. As this is my broken one, I can’t just pull the blocks out and see what happens. I NEED more furbies!!

Furby skinning

Finally managed to skin a furby and you can see the results below. The blurred close up is of the infra-red sensors in the forehead of the furby. One transmits and the other receives, once I’ve isolated them and worked out how the speech is generated then I should be loads closer to having my network up and running.

During my research, I unearthed a furby circuit diagram which I’ve been studying. I think I’ve managed to workout which are the sensors and I’ve been tracing them to other parts of the circuit. Now I just have to workout what they are on the furby itself!

Proposal

A Furby is an electronic toy made by Tiger Electronics. A newly purchased Furby starts out speaking entirely Furbish, the unique language that all Furbys use, but are programmed to speak less Furbish as they learn more English.

A Furby has various switches built in that detect if it is being stroked, patted or inverted. As well as a speaker in its belly there is also a small microphone which is how the Furby “hears”. Research suggests that it is unclear as to what sounds a Furby responds to other than generic loud noises. Built into its forehead is an infra-red sensor which transmits and receives data to and from other Furbies and it is via this that a Furby really communicates.

Various hacks have been made to Furbies from simple circuit bending to a complete replacement of the microprocessor. Most of them concentrate on the circuitry but I intend to make use of the IR sensor. By connecting two Furbies to a computer each, I want to make a small wireless network by sending data via the IR sensors. Keeping the main circuitry intact, I want to create the illusion that the Furbies are passing the data by “talking” to each other.