Tag: Toy

Furby Hacking

~ mehopper

It’s odd how some toy fads come and go as one hit wonders while others seem to stick around and take on a life of their own. Of course, there’s no question that one of the oddest toys with the longest track record is Hasbro’s Furby.

Whether you’re a Furby lover or hater, you have to admit that they’ve got staying power. Perhaps it’s because they give the illusion that they do have a life of the their own, but personally I believe that it’s because of the wide variety of mischief that they can support.

Treating a Furby as a “starter” pet has a certain amount of charm. That’s probably why there’s a ridiculous number of Furby videos on YouTube that feature things like them talking to Siri and dancing Gangnam Style. It’s right up there with cat and dog videos.

However, if you’ve owned a Furby, then you know that the real fun doesn’t begin until you get two or more of the critters together. Then they really carry on. Here’s a party of 20 of them chattering away to each other.

Jared Bendis (YouTube Channel)
Jared Bendis (Official Website)

That trick will entertain kids for a bit, but it’s certainly not the main source of attraction.

That honor most certainly must go to the “hackability” of its personality. While parents may encourage their children to be responsible and take Care of Furby, their off spring are inevitably going to explore how to Turn Furby Evil.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Furby personalities, here’s a short demonstration of the difference between a good and bad Furby (complete with burps).

besttoysguide (YouTube Channel)

Here’s a commercial that plays on the idea.

FurbyOfficialUK (YouTube Channel)

Here’s a 360° video that shows that when you get a group of evil Furbies together, things can get really scary. It also shows that you can find a 360° video about almost anything as well as that there’s some very odd stuff on YouTube (as if you didn’t know that already).

Watch the video below in 360° on YouTube here!

Max Deacon VR – Hella Rad Toys (YouTube Channel)

That video was actually about a game entitled Tattletail that takes the concept of evil Furbies to a whole ‘nother level.

Furbies Get Their Own Horror Game with Tattletail (David Gelmini, Dread Central)

Now if you think that this post is going to stop at someone hacking together a Furby coven, you’re wrong. There are far more extreme Furby hacks out there.

For example, one father and son duo took the concept quite literally, and this resulting “longish” video is surprisingly gruesome.

What’s Inside? (YouTube Channel)
What’s Inside? (Facebook Page)

Then there’s another guy who decided to transform his Furby into an Amazon Echo that he then dubbed Furlexa. The video of how he did it is shorter than the last one, it squeezes in a ton of Furby history, and it has a lot more details about Furby innards. Oh, and we also get to find out if Furby is flammable.

Howchoo (YouTube Channel)
Howchoo (Official Website)

Furlexa strikes me as sort of creepy in all sorts of ways, but here are instructions on how to make one if you’re into that sort of thing.

I turned a Furby into an Amazon Echo. Introducing: Furlexa

Finally, my award for best Furby hacker goes to an artist named Sam Battle that frames his work under the moniker Look Mum No Computer. He engages in a niche practice known as circuit bending to create things like a Furby Organ.

Here’s a feature video and article about his work by Dani Deahl from The Verge.

The Verge (YouTube Channel)
The Verge (Official Website)

Circuit bending: Hacking a Furby in the name of music (Dani Deahl, The Verge)

If you’re inspired to hack a Furby, or other toys, here are some links to get you started.

6 Amazing Terrifying Toys that have been Circuit Bent (Steve Aoki)
Intro to Circuit Bending (Joseph Thibodeau, Hack a Day)
Circuit Bending For Beginners (David Erik Nelson, Performer Magazine)
Simple Ways to Circuit Bend a Toy (Instructables)
How to Circuit Bend (WikiHow)

If you want to learn all about how Furbies came about and keep on succeeding, check out this neat article.

The History Of Furby, The Electronic Pet That Took The Late ’90s By Storm (Lucia Peters, Bustle)

Happy Furby Hacking!

Find out more about toys and robots…

Toy Worlds@Cosma

~ mehopper

I’ve got toys on the brain.

Why not? It ’tis toy season, after all!

Except that if you’ve been reading these posts for awhile, then you know I’ve had toys on the brain for many months now because I’ve been creating experimental interfaces to this site, and I’ve been using toys to do it 🙂

Cosma.org is a directory of some of the best content resources on the web, so showcasing great resources is the primary goal of this project. However another key goal has always been to provide a fun spatial interface to those great resources. There have been many versions of interfaces made in many ways over the years (HyperCard, SecondLife, Unity3D etc.). You can find out more about them on the Worlds page.

A funny thing happened while doing “previs” for a future version, though.

It turned out that using a RICOH THETA S 360° Camera and Kuula to hack together a demo led to an unexpectedly fun and useful interface.

This 360° image is the first in a series of Toy Worlds that serve as a 3D interface to Cosma.

Click on objects to find out about them.
Use the menu or doors to visit other Toy Worlds.

You can also explore this Toy World on Kuula.

Here is one of the earliest, less “polished” demos that I created before all of the Toy Worlds that are distributed across this site. There are some fun nooks and crannies to explore in this one!

While it is a bit “rough around the edges” relative to the other, later demos, it does have the advantage of having been shot in an actual dollhouse, so it is the most “toy season” appropriate Toy World demo of them all!

Bit of Backstory

I bought a RICOH THETA S 360° awhile ago.

I didn’t want me and/or the house in every shot as I learned to use the camera.

Then I had an idea! Why not use a lamp shade to cover the camera?

I tried that, but the only lamp shades in the house were too little to get a sense of the focal point and resolution in the shots.

There was lamp shade shopping to be done.

That is how I found myself in a Target with a lamp shade on my head checking out the view.


Ooops! 🙂

So, I found the perfect lamp shade and started to learn how to shoot 360° images.
Perfect Lamp Shade

Of course, inside a lamp shade is boring!

That’s why I also grabbed some cheap, silly stuff at Target when I got the lamp shade.

Next I decided to test out the 360° photo sharing service called Kuula.

It has the ability to add links, so I decided to make something more elaborate to test out the linking capabilities.

Here’s the first “shade world” that I created in order to test links in Kuula 🙂

It was around this time that I began to realize that a more elaborate version of this approach might work for doing “previs” for some “microworlds” that I plan to make and embed on this site when there is a sufficiently advanced way to show high quality and interactive 3D spaces on web pages.

I began going in that direction with this “microworld” that was my first experiment in using Kuula as a “previs” tool before creating something in a more robust platform like Unity3D.

Then I found this adorable dollhouse in a local antique shop, and I just had to start making some far more elaborate demos!

In order to get more objects in the dollhouse and provide closure to the space, I built it out with some wooden frames. Then those wooden frames turned out be so useful, they clearly took on a life of their own!

So, things went on from there to become the interface to Cosma that Toy Worlds are now — you will see many Toy Worlds distributed across this site.

At this point I’ve taken these demos to their natural conclusion as far as making interfaces to this site. My next adventure will involve either moving on to a new 3D/360° platform or going back to using Unity 3D for making visual interfaces to this site. You can watch for updates about my progress doing this on the Worlds page of this site.

While I’m not planning on creating any more Toy Worlds for this site, that doesn’t mean that there is no future for them.

I don’t know if you noticed, but Toy Worlds also happen to be a great, newfangled way to do those good old staple projects for elementary school students, dioramas.

I’m hoping that elementary school teachers and anyone who is raising an elementary school kid will not only get a kick out of exploring Toy Worlds@Cosma.org — they might also be inspired to create some of their own!

So there it is — I hope you enjoy Toy Worlds & Happy Holidays!

Find out more about Worlds@Cosma …

Best Cat Toy?

~ mehopper

This site doesn’t usually deal in silly internet memes (list) like cute cat videos, but it is Friday, and this character on YouTube called FlippyCat went and posted this awesome 360° video.

Watch the video below in 360° on YouTube here!

FlippyCat (YouTube Channel)
FlippyCat (Facebook)

If the think the dominoes art part is cool, and you want to waste more time, head on over and check out the rest of FlippyCat’s World of Dominoes YouTube Channel. Here’s a promo video to give you a sense of what’s there.

FlippyCat (YouTube Channel)
FlippyCat (Facebook)

Find out more about cats, toys and fun in general …