Furby Brain Surgery

Maybe you have a sick Furby which doesn't act properly.
Maybe you have a dead Furby.  How you got it is not important.

Maybe you want to see how Furby works.
Maybe you want to make Furby into a animatronic puppet.

The goal of this project is to strip Furby down and remove his brain, leaving his other functions intact.

Personally, I intend to stick another microcontroller in there.
What you choose to make Furby do is your business!

I used two different Furby toys for this demo.
Doesn't this one kind of look like Katy Perry?

Step 1 Split Furby's seams

Furby's skin is mainly held on with a zip-tie around the base of his body.

First, expose this zip-tie by cutting the single string that ties the cloth around the head of the zip-tie.  I recommend a seam-ripper, but a pair of scissors or a scalpel (!) will do.

Now you can see the head of the zip-tie.  Unless you can figure out how to undo a zip-tie, you must cut through this sucker.  I recommend wire cutters.

Furby's skin pulls off like a sock, or like someone's shirt, until you get to his face.

Comments

[KEUrban]

That Furby kissed a girl and liked it.

[llasram]

its... sorta disturbing how your wording makes it sound like furby is alive, but that just makes it better

[masterzeb318]

awsome skined furby!!!!

[chicopluma]

when my baby furby die i take out all its circuits and turn it into a stufed animal with cotton, is that taxidermy? hahaha

[sitearm]

Furby... is a, a, a RObot?! *snif* My illusions are shattered. I'm sending this to my daughter, who had a Furby and it scared her, and who now likes to take apart computers and stuff @Monkeywidget; good on ye!

[monkeywidget]

an appalling revelation, I know! If you want to be scarred for life, check out pictures from the hobbyists who have disassembled Teddy Ruxpin!

[cheapchuck]

"Sleep Sick Furby" I have a Furby that is unresponsive but will wake up after the reset button is pressed. At that point, Furby will only go back to sleep. He won't respond to tongue press or light changes, just starts snoozing and shuts down. Any ideas???? Thanks!

[monkeywidget]

If he's waking up and then sleeping, his processor is probably good.

I would bet that his sensors are disconnected somewhere, either the switches themselves are broken (although how would his light sensor be burned out?) or possibly broken solder connections to the main processor board. Both these could be fixed if you disassemble Furby and look for hairline breaks in the traces with a magnifying glass. What a pain!

In the worst case it could be a problem with the sampling hardware, in which case you don't have many options besides re-engineering the part that doesn't work.

[cheapchuck]

I think you may be right about the light sensor/wiring. I gave him to a robot doctor, so I'll report back.

[914tom]

He's tired ??

[NaturalCrafter]

Can't wait to hear how the new board enhances the Furby. I only got as far as basic electricity, so this is interesting but not sure if I would be up to it even with some soldering experience..even with the solder sucker..lol

[NaturalCrafter]

"Furgy"?? Ahh..darn keyboard..maybe that is what its called neckkkked..lol

[NaturalCrafter]

Being able to change the inner workings sounds cool. My furgy has been sitting on the shelf for years..My husband and I have one because supposedly they interact with each other. They do a couple times and then you got to shake them or "tickle" or clap and usually they get startled and start interacting again. It sure would be nice to enhance their vocabulary. Maybe I should think of a new fur or outfit for my green furby..lol

[lperkins]

Undoing a zip-tie is as simple as tightening it up a *half* a click, and then sticking a small screwdriver or the point of a knife under the locking tab. It's usually pretty easy to do unless the thing has absolutely not slack whatsoever in it.

[Rayney]

Unfortunately the zip-tie holding on the furby skin has absolutely no slack at all. I have a whole box full of these dead buggers and the only way to undo these zip-ties are to cut them from my experience. The replacement zip-ties I've put in the ones I have recovered I did leave some slack so they can be removed without cutting.

[WindowsDevPro]

Quick correction here: The logic is not stored in the EEPROM, only the name, how far along the furby is and what voice the TI voice synthesis chip should use. The "logic" is stored under that blob of epoxy which houses a SunPlus SPC81A which is a RISC processor with 80K of onboard storage (Mostly LPC storage for the co processor)

The second chip is a TI50C04 speech synthesis chip (Which also doubles as an 8-bit microcontroller ... I know right?) and that handles the Furbys voice as well as IR communications. So its really a co-processor in addition to the first one (Technically the number in the patent differers from TIs naming convention ... I don't know why, but if anyone really cares then pm me)

[monkeywidget]

awesome! Thanks for the update; I'll add that immediately.

I'm excited now to repurpose the TI50C04 now, which ironically was the original reason I became interested in taking these furry little guys apart!

[WindowsDevPro]

If you want the datasheet for it, google the TSP50C04 (Which is what TI calls that chip) message me and we can work on it together and combine our efforts! :)

[affyx]

naked furby reminds me of an angry bird

[monkeywidget]

yeah, maybe I should catapult him at some pigs now?

[bajablue]

lol... I recently rescued a Furby (my very FIRST ;-) from the local thrift store.

I couldn't resist his cuteness and despite his half-missing eyelashes, it was love at first sound.

All I can say is it's a good thing these toys weren't around when I was a kid. I would have gone furby-collecting-CrAzY!

[ModMischief]

I fully support Furby deconstruction!

Newer Furbys and Baby Furbys look quite different on the inside.

I was surprised to find 2 motors in the Furby I recently dissected.

Photos of a skinned newer model Furby

Photos of a skinned Baby Furby

Video of some of the animatronics in a newer Furby

[monkeywidget]

Wow! That is very, very different. There's something very creepy about the new model's eyes - perfect for your Krang project!

In your experience, is it harder to repurpose the new hardware? As I show in this demo, the older Furby has an easily-extractable brain.

Thanks ModMischief!

[ModMischief]

I've only ever needed to take out the motor and hook it up to a simple on/off switch, so I'm not really sure how hackable they are.

The newer Furbys seem less likely to have mysterious black blobs covering the electronics, so that might make things simpler.

[WindowsDevPro]

The new model has what looks like test points on it (I'll hook my Logic Analyzer to it tomorrow maybe and see whats up) its using the next generation voice synthesis chip from a company that bought it from TI (The ones who made it for the first Furby) and you can get the development software off of their website. (However they no longer sell development boards) Awww

I just got one of the 2005 revisions like today, and I'll have more for you tomorrow, but basically its the same side board, tilted in the side of the Furby, but the main "brain" is still a drop in daughterboard.

[WindowsDevPro]

My replacement will be an Atmel ATMEGA328P TQFP and headers for easy development with the Furby. I'll release it when I've got a working prototype board and some example code.

[WindowsDevPro]

I'm working on a custom replacement for the Furby "brain" (Really its main daughterboard if I can get one of the ancient LPC programs from TI, and if not I'll have to replace two daughterboards. (Main, and voice)

Message me and I'll give you my email address and website I'll be sharing everything at. I'l about to finish up a little prototype board in eagle, and then send it off to BatchPCB. And then I need to finish my video for kickstarter .... fun! :)

[tinker234]

it does look like katy perry so i guess hiting it with a butcher knfie was the wrong call whoops oh well

[lloro]

It does look like Katy Perry