furby

behavior testing

2006-03-01T02:11:00.000-08:00

Angela said that when she took her furby on the school bus in December, some of the other kids were kind of rude to it. She says that "the little ones creep her out". She doesn't want the big one skinned.

Furby seems to have a history of irritating people. Some kids at school told me that they have seen smashed furby bits in the band room, and that somebody bought a whole bunch of them so that he could run them over with a steamroller in Time's Square. Liz doesn't want her daughter getting emotionally attached to electronic devices.

Last night we played with the language stuff on both. Eventually the little one just closed its eyes and shut down. irritated or just out of batteries?
This site had some translation information. We should have printed them out. It would have made it easier.
http://www.langmaker.com/furbish.htm
We tried to find some of the easter eggs listed on this site, but no luck on them.
http://www.angelfire.com/fl/crystalthecat/unknown.html
http://www.hackfurby.com/secrets.html

Here's a fan site that shows almost exclusively the early version:
http://www.mimitchi.com/html/furby.htm
http://www.langmaker.com/furbish.htm

This site had good photos of the inside of the modern furby, the photo in the post is from this site.
http://eecue.com/images_archive/eecue-images-24149-Furby_Exoskeleton.html

new furby coming

2006-02-28T02:57:00.000-08:00

This morning I see that I have won another furby on ebay. This would match the newer, larger one. There is still one smaller one out on bid for $.99.

Description This little white FURBY came to me NEW in the box and I
did take him out of the box to make sure that he worked and he works GREAT and he or she is NEW and will be in the box, this FURBY can be --HAPPY-SLEEPY -SUPRISED -SCARED-SAD AND MORE, THIS furby CAN SPEEK HUNDREDS OF WORDS AND UNDERSTANS DOZENS OF PHRASES & COMMANDS AND THE MORE THAT YOU PLAY WITH THEM THE MORE IT WILL DO FOR YOU, HIS EARS MOVE -HIS EYES OPEN & CLOSE -HE CAN SMILE & FROWN -HIS BEAK MOVES WHEN HE TALKS - AND HE CAN DO A LITTLE DANCE FOR YOU, HE SPEAKS FURBISH NOW BUT WITH YOUR HELP HE CAN LEARN ENGLISH. "

ir test and some links

2006-02-27T14:05:00.000-08:00

quick test and some links
They both seem to respond to the furby.exe program. At times, they were both singing the same song at pretty much the same time. They are both sleeping now, after using the o and p keys. I left the caps lock on.

The smaller one seems to have scrambled speech, kind of circuit bent.

Here are a few links about the new sensory chip capabilities of the version released in the fall of 05:
http://www.sensoryinc.com/html/company/pr05_08.html

http://www.eepn.com/Locator/Products/ArticleID/32663/32663.html

ir port testing

2006-02-26T18:33:00.002-08:00

Tonight is a basic test to see if the downloaded program furby.exe works.
Some observations:

1st gen
On the first gen, there is an ir port in the third eye location.
Furby.exe works.
Some of the words seem scrambled, kind of circuit bent.
It seems to matter if the caps lock is on when you press the letters.
Here is a link to the application - http://www.veg.nildram.co.uk/furby.exe
Here is a link to the website where I found the app - http://www.veg.nildram.co.uk/furby.htm
If you don't interact with it, it will say "hey, boring" and some other stuff
It burps
It sneezes a lot.
There is no on off switch for the first gen

2nd gen
furby.exe doesn't seem to work
some of the keys might be giving a response. There doesn't seem to be an obvious ir port on this one. Maybe it is behind the eyes.
This one dances better. If not properly set on a base, it will fall over. I have it sitting on the arm of a chair near the laptop.
It does seem more animated around the ir than normal.

they both seem more animated together than alone.

new furby

2006-02-26T06:31:00.000-08:00

Furby arrived via mail Saturday.
It is a first generation furb (I think) It looks like the ones in most of the hacking websites.
There is a section on hacking the furby in home hacking projects for geeks.
It is smaller than the one Angela got for christmas. One of the ear sticks is broken.
It still has the tag.
It cost $1.99 on ebay, $3 for shipping.
It speaks a different version of ferbish than the christmas one.
The small one does not respond to voice or touch as easily as the larger one.
Photos have been taken, but are still on the camera. It might make a good companion for the guinea pigs. They will not be able to talk back to it, but might like to listen.
There is an IR port on the forehead, but none of the clickers in the house seem to have any effect on it.