Internet Enabled Furby

furby_arduino

[edwindertien] sent us his project to connect a Furby to the internet. The original Furby controller was replaced with an Arduino which in turn was given ethernet connectivity via a LANTRONIX XPort serial ethernet module. This assigns the Furby an IP address which can then be accessed through a script or via a web interface. Now we want to see someone combine this idea with the arduino that sings “Daisy Bell” to make the ultimate in creepy new email notifiers.

18 thoughts on “Internet Enabled Furby

  1. I first read that as ‘internet enabled furry’, which seemed kind of redundant because they are already pretty annoyingly net-enabled.
    Figuring out how to get them >off< the net, now that would be a truly useful hack.

  2. I wish I could still find it..

    There was a video posted (years) some time ago, of a guy (Charles Brush maybe?) electrocuting a furby with 14.4kV from a pole transformer back-fed with a welder so he didn’t blow his mains. *that* was a hack to remember.

  3. I was hoping for an attempt at a chobits persocom internet, but that would be no small undertaking, seeing how voice control barely works under a complex OS (without tuning and periodic use at least)

  4. to be clear, that’s not internet enabling a furby. Its repurposing the shell and mechanics of a furby. having left the electronics in place and functioning, while somehow attaching them to the internet would be internet enabling.

    You cant ‘enable’ something *a* with something *b* after it was hacked out and thrown in the trash.

    Anyway, whatever. nice job.

  5. And then his homepage says something usefull..
    “You’ll have to sift through a lot of newbie posts, but after a while your own filters will kick in and you’ll be able to focus on the important information.” XD jst like it.

  6. He could have left the electronics in place and talked to it wirelessly through the infrared sensor already built into furby, this i’ve done, some years ago though, if i remember it’s just a 4 bit command mirrored to make a Byte, you can even talk to these things with a tv remote, how about a furby tvbgone, who would ever suspect a small fury creature?

  7. It is that easy, if i remember the furby command format is something like one high nibble 1010, low nibble not’ed 0101. there can only be 16 commands, dare i say even a aduino could manage that

  8. @MRE You’re probably right that to fully ‘internet enable’ a furby it’s nicer to leave its original brain in place. However, I *did* use most of its original electronics. I replaced the brain by the arduino, using furby’s motorcontrol, sensor-amps, etc. The hackfurby.com approach was more radical in that sense, taking out all electronics and replacing everything by RC servo’s. Still, making a infrared-furby-to-internet connection could be the way to ‘internet-enable’ the furby. I doubt however that the 4-bit IR protocol allows for full motor-control and access to all sensor inputs.

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