Decided to try and hack my kid's Furby after it
started talking en francais. I found this page which was helpful http://www.afu.com/fur.html run by a
fellow who has issued a $250 challenge to program one of the little
buggers.
One particular paragraph caught my eye namely:
Once Furby has been hacked, my goal is to give it a
Java API allowing the device to become a general Java engine. Perhaps it will
use the Java Speech API. Perhaps it will use the Java Media Framework. Perhaps
the hacked Furby will become a processor for running Java software that looks
for Mersenne primes and belches as it finds new ones.
Now these things may only have the CPU of an
Apple II (true) but there are over 2 million of them (so far) and most of the
time they sit idle when they're not belching. Now if we could figure out
how to interpret the IR I/O (they communicate with each other via IR),
they could transmit results to a laptop and thence to Primenet.
Or maybe not!
