The Furby Organ

February 12, 2018 by Steven Dufresne 30 Comments

Sometimes you have an idea that is so brilliant and so crazy that you just have to make it a reality. In 2011, [Look Mum No Computer] drew up plans in his notebook for a Furby organ, an organ comprised of a keyboard and a choir of Furbies. For those who don’t know what a Furby is, it’s a small, cute, furry robotic toy which speaks Furbish and a large selection of human languages. 40 million were sold during its original production run between 1998 and 2000 and many more since. Life intervened though, and, [LMNK] abandoned the Furby organ only to recently take it up again.

He couldn’t get a stable note out of the unmodified Furbies so he instead came up with what he’s calling the Furby Forman Fusion Synthesis. Each Furby is controlled by a pair of Ardunios. One Arduino sequences parts inside the Furby and the other produces a formant note, making the Furby sing vowels.

We love the label he’s given for what would otherwise be the power switch, namely the Collective Awakening switch. Flicking it causes all 44 (we count 45 but he says 44) Furbies to speak up while moving their ears, eyes, and beaks. Pressing the Loop switch makes them hold whatever sound they happen to be making. The Vowel dial changes the vowel. But you’ll just have to see and hear it for yourself in the videos below. The second video also has construction details.

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Furby Plus Borges Equals Borgy

December 8, 2018 by Richard Baguley 10 Comments

What do you get if you cross a Furby with a master of 20th Century literature? The Borgy. Argentinian hacker [Roni Bandini] found an old Furby and decided to hack it by altering its personality. His inspiration was the Argentinian writer Jorge Louis Borges, one of the pioneers of surrealist writing. The idea is that, at random times during the day, the Borgy will share a bit of wisdom from Borges to inspire and enlighten.

[Roni] hacked the Furby to replace the speaker with a more powerful one, and built a base to hold the larger speaker and a switch which can activate Borgy. He also used an Arduino Nano and a Sparkfun MP3 player shield loaded with the samples of Borges.

When the Furby speaks, it shares some wisdom from Borges. It’s a simple, but a surprisingly effective hack that could be very useful for someone seeking inspiration. Or, as Borges himself once said: “Don’t talk unless you can improve the silence.”

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[Look Mum No Computer] sits inside his new museum of obsolete technology and synth oddities.

This (Obsolete Technology) Museum Is (Not) Obsolete

September 24, 2021 by Kristina Panos 11 Comments

You know, we’re not sure how this escaped our attention for so long. Blame it on the summer heat. Did you know that [Look Mum No Computer] opened a museum of obsolete technology a few weeks ago?

This Museum is (Not) Obsolete is located by the seaside in the Ramsgate section of Kent, England, where you’ll also find the Micro Museum, a collection of computing and video game history. [LMNK] says it took 10 months to build the museum, which is a maze of vintage delights including decades of computers and computer accessories, signal generators, VFDs, vacuum tubes, old phone equipment, and 50 years’ worth of 150-in-one electronics kits. This list doesn’t even sort of start to scratch the surface.

Around every turn there are forgotten technological gems and never-heard-ofs, plus the space is peppered with [LMNK]’s own superb synth creations. (Who could forget the Furby Organ?) The goal is to make it as interactive as possible, and to keep growing the collection. So far, [LMNK] has welcomed visitors of all backgrounds and ages, which is exactly what he was after. Can’t quite make it to Ramsgate? Us either. Do what we did and take the video tour below.

If you can get there, you might want to check out the National Museum of Computing, too.

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The Hacker History Of Music Technologies

January 6, 2020 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

Music throughout history has been inspired and changed by hackers and makers, and never moreso than in the 20th century. Helen Leigh is one such hacker, who brought a talk to Supercon to give us a crash course in the history of recording, electronics and music, and what the maker movement is doing in the music world today.

The tape recorder was an invention that kicked off a golden period of exploration in sound. Beginning in World War II, the Nazi propaganda machine cut and spliced recorded materials and disseminated them across broadcasting stations in Europe. To the astonishment of the Allies, certain German officials appeared to be making broadcasts from different studios at the same time, due to the high quality of the recording hardware. After the war, this technology was discovered by a group of Parisian recording artists who began to experiment with an art that became known as musique concrète, using tape hardware in weird and wonderful ways to create new sounds heretofore unheard in nature.

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HitClips Custom Cartridge Hack Will Never Give Up, Let Down, Or Turn Around

January 10, 2022 by Ryan Flowers 11 Comments

In August 2000, Tiger Electronics released HitClips: Music cartridges and players designed to easily share 60 second low quality Clips of a youngster’s favorite Hits. Various players were available, and individual cartridges were inexpensive enough to collect. And it’s these toy music players that [Guy Dupont] has been hacking quite successfully on as you can see in the video after the break and on [Guy]’s Hackaday.io page.

[Guy]’s main goal was to make cartridges of his own that could not just hold more music than the short clips in the commercially made product, but could make use of modern technology that has matured since HitClips came onto the scene more than 20 years go.

The project’s components are relatively simple, but beautifully executed. An ATTINY84 didn’t work out, so a SAM D09 controller was put it place to to read files from a microSD card and translate the WAV file into the HitClips player’s format. 3d printed cartridges and custom PCB’s complete the hack, ensuring that you can use any of the many HitClips players to play something new for a change.

The end result is quite good, considering that it’s still just 8 bit audio on a 20 year old toy player. Tiger Electronics made another toy that’s quite popular with hackers of the musical kind.

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Kelly Heaton’s Artwork Blurs The Line Between Traditional And Electronic

December 16, 2019 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

Digital electronics are all well and good, but it’s hard to ignore the organic, living qualities of the analog realm. It’s these circuits that Kelly Heaton spends her time with, building artistic creations that meld the fine arts with classic analog hardware to speak to the relationship between electronics and nature. During her talk at the 2019 Hackaday Superconference, Kelly shared the story of her journey toward what she calls Electronic Naturalism, and what the future might bring.

The Pool of Reflection Loop was one of Kelly’s early electronic installation pieces.

Kelly got her start like many in the maker scene. Hers was a journey that began by taking things apart, with the original Furby being a particular inspiration. After understanding the makeup of the device, she began to experiment, leading to the creation of the Reflection Loop sculpture in 2001, with the engineering assistance of Steven Grey. Featuring 400 reprogrammed Furbys, the device was just the beginning of Kelly’s artistic experimentation. With an interest in electronics that mimicked life, Kelly then moved on to the Tickle Me Elmo. Live Pelt (2003) put 64 of the shaking Muppets into a wearable coat, that no doubt became unnerving to wear for extended periods.

Analog electronics parallel living organisms while programmable logic merely simulates life.

—Forrest Mims

Wanting to create art with a strong relationship to organic processes, Kelly focused on working with discrete components and analog circuitry. Basic building blocks such as the astable multivibrator became key tools that were used in different combinations to produce the desired effects. Through chaining several oscillators together, along with analog sequencers, circuits could be created that mimicked the sound of crickets in a backyard, or a Carolina wren singing in a tree.

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Clever Approach To Stylus Alignment

March 6, 2018 by Brian McEvoy 25 Comments

Digitally stored music is just data. But not long ago, music was analog and required machines with moving parts. If you have never owned a record player, you at least know what they look like, now that there’s a(nother) vinyl revival. What you may not be aware of is that the player’s stylus needs to be aligned. It makes sense, that hypersensitive needle can’t be expected to perform well if it’s tearing across a record like a drift racer.

There are professional tools for ensuring alignment, but it’s not something you’ll need each day. [Ali Naci Erdem] shows us his trick for combining a printable template with a mirror to get the same results without the professional tool costs. Instead of ordinary printer paper, he prints the template on a piece of clear plastic and lays it across a small mirror. These are both items which can be picked up at a hobby store, which is not something we can say about a record player mirror protractor.

We love music hacks like this informative introduction to circuit bending, the wonderful [Martin] from Wintergatan, or if you want to get weird, an organ made from Furbies.