Hacked Farm Toy Plays Simon

 

My kids have a plastic farm toy. It moos, it oinks, it neighs, it
baas, and frankly, it grates. But since I tricked it out with an
attiny2313, at least it can play “Simon Says”.

This is what [Tom] said in his email to us. We love that when the toy annoyed [Tom], he improved it.

He started by inserting his own electronics. Using an ATTiny2313 for the brains, he proceeded to make it into an interesting game of “simon says”.  Each stall is a button and has a nice bright LED in it to help you follow along. Interestingly, he preserved the original electronics as well and added a switch so he could change modes. Great job [Tom]!

Catch the video after the break.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Cw1cQGUrFPM]

10 thoughts on “Hacked Farm Toy Plays Simon

  1. Holy crap. My girlfriend’s son has this toy… the cat plays with it more than he does, and it is annoying as all hell.

    I hate fake animal noises but now that there is a point to them they seem slightly less obnoxious

    Brilliant hack; good choice of music.

  2. The toy is made by Fisher Price and sold at WalMart — I’ve seen this obnoxious plaything all too many times. If I remember correctly there’s a silo attachment.

    This is an excellent hack – it makes this toy much more practical and educational!

  3. Glad to see people are still too dumb to understand that adding a music track ruins the video. Dude, you dont have the rights to it, you also dont have a clue as to how to set volume levels…

    if you think you need music, DONT. It’s always better without it.

  4. Well this is cool in my book. Wish there were a little more of a write up. Nice job on figuring out something fun to do with this old toy. I was the Uncle of the Year a couple ago for simply putting volume limiting resistors in my niece’s toys lol. The 4th time you hear one of those things you start shakily looking for bullets lol

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