Fun With Furby
By: DTMF

As a Linux hacker, sometimes we have fun doing all sorts of "silly" things, some of us thought it would be cool to "hack" furby and reverse engineer some of his "guts".

You probably are by now quiet tired of your Furby, after all it's been since Christmas, and you have probably exhausted all the cool things you can do with them. So here is something entirely different:

Our photos looked rather "hosed" so here is one from
the Furby Autopsy page.

Here is the real inner-workings of an actual Furby.

Lets dispel some Myths:

1. Furby has a fast CPU.  False.
He runs about 1Mhz or less.

2. Furby has the ability to learn English and record things.  False.
He has no built in ability to do any such thing.

3. Furby has video cameras for eyes.  False.
There are no known Furbys with such ability. They are completely
lacking any sensory ability other than primitive switches.

4. You can hack Furby to do X (insert statement here).  False.
Other than the preset stuff Furby can do, you have no way of
forcing it to do anything else.

You can actually use any good universal remote control to make Furby do normal and strange things:

(Note: You WILL need your remote control manual, for this to work.)
 

Emulated  Brand	Button	Furby  Reaction
RCA/ProScan	Vol Down	"Twinkle Twinkle" song.
GE, Panasonic, Pioneer	Power	Fall Asleep (Immediately with Snore)
Curtis Mathes, LXI(Sears), Pioneer, Toshiba	3	Weird.  YAWN and/or Hide and go seek.
Craig, Emerson	2	Fall Asleep Immediately (with Snore)
	7,8	Play Hide and Go Seek
	4	Fall Asleep Immediately (with Snore)
Craig, Emerson	Vol Down	Get Sleepy (Yawns on first press, Sleeps on second).
Craig, Emerson, Radio Shack, Scott, Symphonic	Vol Down	Fall Asleep Immediately (with Snore)
Fisher, LXI(Sears)	1	Play Hide and Go Seek
	3	Sneeze
	8	Acts like he's going to sleep but stays awake.
	7	INIT
	0	Acts like he's going to sleep but stays awake.
	Channel Down	Sneeze
Vidtech	Power	Sneeze
	3	INIT
KTV	Vol Down	Acts like he's going to sleep but stays awake.
Daewoo	Power	Sneeze
	2	Fall Asleep Immediately (with Snore)
	4	YAWN
	8	Play Hide and Go Seek
	Scroll Right	INIT

Brand	Device	Button	Reaction
Hitachi	TV	1	Caused two furbies to interact.
Hitachi	TV	1	Sneeze
Pioneer	Laser Disc Player	Rewind	Sneeze
Pioneer	Receiver	Peripheral Buttons	INIT
Laptop	IR Port		'I've been interfacing with my laptop's IR port.  I can detect the "Are you there" signal, and it appears to be quite simple.  I can get him to yawn almost continuously using one of my remote controls, and sneeze continuously using another one.  But only once have I gotten any major  reaction from the IR port. He started talking and was just like a three year old (wouldn't stop), but I couldn't get it to happen again.  I'm just not on the right frequency yet.  I suspect the stop bits are preventing me from getting out the pure signal I need.'
Samsung			Twinkle Twinkle
Panasonic	TV	Power	Sleep

That's it for hacking the Furby, you would have to add a Pentium class CPU and
a few more sound circuits to make them really cool, but so much for now.

A few good Hack Furby websites:
www.homestead.com/hackfurby
veg.nildram.co.uk/furby.htm