Make Your Furby Even More Terrifying by Giving It Intelligence with Alexa

For those of you who have managed to block out your memories of Furby, allow me to give you a refresher. Furby was a line of animatronic toys from the late ’90s that was a best selling gift for years. An original Furby could move its mouth, eyes, and ears, and spoke the Furbish language. Eventually it would simulate the process of learning English, and the results were predictably terrifying.

As scary as they were, most of us could at least take solace in the fact that they didn’t possess any real intelligence. Now Zach from Howchoo is throwing that small comfort out of the window by giving it Alexa capabilities. To make that happen, he removed all of the original electronics and replaced them with a Raspberry Pi Zero W running the Alexa service.

In addition to the Raspberry Pi itself, there is a Pimoroni Speaker pHAT, a USB microphone, and an Adafruit stepper driver. The speaker and microphone allow the Pi to be used like an Amazon Echo. The stepper driver is there to move the Furby’s mouth, eyes, and ears using the original motor and mechanisms.

The result is impressively smooth, though just as disconcerting as you’d expect. Anytime Alexa is saying something, the mouth moves along. The movement seems to be pretty well synced, at least as well as the original. If you want to build your own, the total cost should be under $50.