Furby HACKED

The saga continues.

The Furby rage dominated the 1998 Christmas season. The furry e-pet loaded with plastic gears and electronics talked (language – Furbish), slept, sneezed, and more. Several million were sold. With a list price of $35.95 (for those lucky enough to find one in a toy store), they fetched higher prices at auction sites like eBay.

By the 1999 Christmas season, the Furby fad had run its course but collectors paid premium prices for rare breeds. However, a run-of-the-mill Furby sold in the $20 to $30 range at auction.

Van der Linden’s Challenge

In January 1999, Peter van der Linden challenged the hacker community to create an improved Furby that could be modified by reprogramming. A small cash prize ($250) sweetened the deal. Furby hack efforts launched. During 1999 and most of 2000, the prize remained unclaimed. It should be remembered John Tokash completely autopsied the beast with guts fully exposed on his Web site. Fully deconstructing Furby via reverse engineering remained a daunting task. The toy maker (Hasbro, parent of Tiger Electronics) tenaciously protected its intellectual property. During the manufacturing process, vital electronic components defy scrutiny encased in blobs of thermosetting plastic. Attempts to subdivide the mass often result in destruction of Furby’s brain. Van der Linden feared nobody could crack such a tough nut.

The mother of an autistic child contacted Van der Linden in 1999 regarding the Hack Furby Challenge. She noticed speech improvement when her son interacted with the toy. Naturally, she was anxious to find a programmable Furby possessing greater intelligence.

Up North

Calgary, Canada, is the home of Jeffery Gibbons. Aided by the cooperative spirit found on the Internet (ala Linux/GNU open source community), Gibbons made the breakthrough. He singles out Chris Brown for a schematic of the reverse engineered layout and electronics. With the benefit of this information, rather than reprogram the talking toy (processor and memory), Gibbons’ solution was to give Furby a new, larger brain. Cobbling together standard off-the-shelf components (read low cost), Gibbons not only walked off with van der Linden’s prize money, but he allows other Furby hobbyists to share in the fun. He sells the upgrade kit for only $65 USD.

You may want to rummage around a toy chest in the hopes of finding an abandoned Furby for upgrade. (Note: Furby eBay prices have dropped to the $10 to $20 range.) Before you tackle this project, however, keep in mind the brain transplant adventure remains a work in progress. As a first step, the toy would have to be delicately “de-skinned,” some components removed, and the kit carefully installed. Needless to say, the effort immediately voids the Furby warranty. Gibbons clearly states his upgrade kit is not endorsed by, supported by, or associated in any way with Furby’s manufacturer, Tiger Electronics. Forget any warranty from Gibbons. You are on your own.

It Doesn’t Stop There

Once Furby has a new brain, giving the extra smart toy voice and movement becomes the next challenge. Upgrading Furby holds strong similarity to building a kit airplane. Once assembly is completed and tested, the hobbyist may need to take flying lessons. In this case, the hobbyist needs to program the toy. The tools available are rather crude. Forget about using friendly drop/drag/cut/paste graphical development software. Programming “smart Furby” may best be left to C/Linux/FreeBSD/Debian GNU programmers/hackers. The silver lining on this cloud remains the strong community spirit of sharing ideas that brought the modified toy to this more advanced state of development. If someone could create an outer skin transforming Furby into a talking penguin (the Linux mascot), rapid development would be almost guaranteed.

A Special Christmas

Van der Linden has promised the first fully functional extra smart talking Furby to the mother of the autistic child. Hats off to Peter Van der Linden, Jeff Gibbons, John Tokash, Chris Brown, Blank Frank, and many others who all pitched in (directly or indirectly) to make a special Christmas for one special child. Some uber-geek members of the open source/GNU community may be able to step up and use their special skills to leverage a Rain Man-esque project to many more kids around the planet. Let’s hope so.

URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) of interest:

http://www.thebee.com/bweb/iinfo138.htm

http://www.furbyupgrade.20m.com/

http://www.afu.com/furby/winner.html

http://www.hackfurby.com/

http://www.phobe.com/furby/

(This is the 232nd of a series of elementary articles designed for surfing the Internet. Next, “Distance Learning” is the subject on tap. Stay Tuned. Until next week, happy travels through cyberspace. Previous issues of Internet Info for Real People can be found: http://www.thebee.com. Please e-mail comments and suggestions: rbrand@JUNO.com or editor@thebee.com.)