Furby Gurdy circuit bend

Over 800 years back, a musical instrument began to look in the centre East as well as in The European Union known as a hurdy gurdy. The hurdy gurdy was operated having a crank, and moved a rosin-coated wheel which “bowed” the strings from the instrument.

Go forward to 1998, when Tiger Electronics began creating a very strange children’s toy known as the Furby, which offered many millions of units, producing a unsuccessful make an effort to take around the globe.

Well, some crazy person had the vibrant idea to mix both of these weird things into – you suspected it: A Furby Gurdy.

The Furby Gurdy combines the “guts” of four Furby toys which may be designed to produce music noise one to another by winding a handle, much like a regular hurdy gurdy. Each one of the little Furbys continues to be genetically modified (circuit bent) with the addition of new connections and controls which create a variety of new and beautiful sounds.

Furby Gurdy circuit bendBecause the wheel is cranked, four wheels operate four switches each – the succession is produced or modified with the addition of or removing components from 12 screw holes round the wheels. Each Furby has six controls:

  • Mute
  • Loop Hold (repeats a brief loop of audio)
  • Loop momentary (repeats a loop once)
  • Switch the succession between your screws and gaps between your screws
  • Crash – helps make the Furby add too much
  • Reset

Furby Gurdy circuit bendThere’s also sockets around the back for audio out along with a trigger to control exterior devices (the recording shows it controlling a Korg synthesizer). Look at this to determine images of your building process.

If you are quick, you’ll probably still begin to see the listing on Ebay for any Furby Gurdy. If you’d rather visit a pikachu suffer the effects of circuit bending, check out this .

Also, browse the BBC piece around the guy who means they are.

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6 AWESOME COMMENTS

Thats pretty funny. Someone should have some additional time on their own hands

Thats funny. keep em coming

A Furby Gurdy. Thats pretty funny. Someone should have some additional time on their own hands.

Really impressive work.
Allow the Great Noise be our guide.

great article. keep em coming.

Spectacular, surprised we’d to hold back such a long time before we began visiting a toy made in the last part of this millennium be hacked and modded.

How to sync a circuit bent furby to a synth video #furby #circuitbending

Video COMMENTS:
  • Marcus de Jonge: is there a way to turn a furby in to a guitar amp? if yes how?
  • Curtis Newton: wow did’nt know these little shits were so complex inside
  • BubblewrapOracle: “Its sort of music, but…not really”
    Oh so it’s dubjazz? Dubstep/freeform jazz
  • Hazel Brooks: You are amazing. The magic when the furbs sang its first synth loop. Oh its brilliant. I wish I had the opportunity to come chill and make some completely mad and genius creations.
  • Ricardo de Rada: Dude, you are my hero!
  • Maricela Lixa: !!!!! wouw nice !!!!
  • Richard Smith: Furby’s circuit bend themselves when the battery runs low. I know, I have the childhood scars to prove it.
  • Hippo: But did you find a camera?
  • craig mk3: Just come across your channel, wow you are on a different level. Ha props.
  • Sharkie: 0:57 coke. DAA DAA!
  • Sharkie: LOOK
    MUM NO
    COMPUTER.
  • clement delaroussiere: noticed that lsdj sticker ? You’re so cool 🙂
  • Dee Sull: holy fucking eurorack guy
  • Kelsey Jensen: youre a real world mad scientist and i love it
  • FoxString: Redbone but it’s played by furbies.
  • Pamela Merritt: poor Furby darling
  • Starrystrixx: the furby organ has come to its full glory due to this awesome dude’s hard work
  • Austin Crawford: Congratulations on the completion of your life’s work.
  • Laura VanDyk: Maybe the furby’s not that musical ‘cuz he’s screaming “help me” and pinpointing your location in a secret computer language. 😛
  • Pussy Galore: You need to work out a song with Pebble The Crazy Cockatoo. You are a mad genius and I thank you for the joy that you bring!
  • Lasse: I just found you and my mind is blown –for good! Thanks for the stuff you do
  • Colin Wiens: Circuit bend a google home? Or is circuit bending not very doable with digital circuits?
  • Chimii’s Universe: This is amazing keep up the great work
  • Somebody: I’m going to share this video with my musical friends without any context and see how they react.
  • Teodor Mischkin: You´re a fucking genius you are you know that! Would´ve been amazing to see the actual organ come to life. Keep going.
  • Chris Kostelec: F U R B Y C O R E
  • Linus Hyper: I fucking love this channel
  • Jpegg Music: Fair play man.. your awesome!
  • Mr Cacique: Love your creativity bro.
  • Jackson Shelton: you could have cheaped out on the precision oscillator and hooked up a CMOS 555 timer to it
  • El: you need more subs! keep these great videos coming!
  • Chris LeeWoo: To be perfectly honest, that schematic was easier for me to grok than professional looking ones.
  • J Nada: Furby organ! this is why youtube got invented.
  • Infinity 528 Hz: Very inspiering to see your creativity flow,….i laugh a lot and was thrilled to see it,.. Peace man <3
  • ThundercatDarklion: Pawsome LOL! 😀 =^.^=
  • Justin Pietro: could you link me to the data sheet of the relays you used? I cant seem to find the chips or the pinout anywhere):
  • John Clark: What song is that in the begining?
  • Saphiresurf: I absolutely love the sound produced from this bend Reminds me of some of the stuff in Koan & Asa’s collaboration album where they used a circuit bent learn to spell. The link in the description seems to be down though, do you know if info on how to do those bends are available anywhere else?
  • Alex Slonimer: This is amazing! I’m inspired! I’m gonna hook up some wireless Nano shields to a bunch of furbies I’ve been collecting and set them up around my house, and control them all from a central control panel! Thanks for showing how easy it is to circuit bend them!
  • barron marshall: I was just thinking you should make a furbee sampler as gijs suggested. really cool idea for and organ. your modular must be worth a fortune. peace!
  • The PotFather: you look like bobcat goldthwait…and that’s a compliment my dude
  • kyoto graphic: beautiful drums. Where from?also, how are you like 16 but have so much stuff? You’re cool
  • mentalityFlavorist: FURBYS CAN DANCE AND SING ON THEIR OWN YOU MONSTER(seriously though, this is cool. I know nothing about circuit bending but it looks really complicated and I can see you took a lot of notes. not something I’d be up for trying to figure out though.)
  • croodmiche: Furby Vocoder SPOTTED
  • -Luziferino-: youre crazy o.0Read more

    i like it

  • netsight: 5:02 still better than kpop
  • Jacques De Bordeaux: “Its sort of music– not really.” Epic.
  • Neil D: quality. skills! would like to hear more of yr tunes too if thats wats playin in the back?
  • Ivan Suvorov: every idm composer
  • merkanoidpeanutbutter: What a waste of furbies you should have used broken ones
  • Organzoner: Is there a way to monitor the outputs of a bunch of furbies always looking for chromatic frequencies then when a key is pressed on the organ, freeze the corresponding furbie and output the furbie voice.
  • Michael Bath: try pitching the output ala autotune?
  • Bin Ury: Beware, this angers the Skynet.
  • Dan Patrick: awesome furby jam!
  • Eliza A. Tkacz Music: This is freaking crazy! In a good way. I become a fan of yours 🙂 Hugs, ElizaT
  • niles david: This is very cool. You are impressively weird in the best way. tweak head.
  • CAL: Oh hell yes
  • Igor Amokian: Awesome!!!!!! I saw a circuit bent Furby Army at Bent Fest .
  • b4wd0DD: You are slowly bringing back the motivation i had when i was 14 and melting toys with my terrible soldering skills, i should try it again ! love your videos 😀
  • Dani Φi: Wow… I bet you would be able to do a cover of any theme from C4 Utopia with those… It’s kinda creepy but amazing project. ?
  • DoctorBlankenstein: Subscribe back, we are from the same planet. 🙂
  • Sysex|Studio: Looking forward to the finished furby organ. This was quite a cool little glitch maker however. Cheers.
  • Einar Goksøyr Åsen: Could you doublecheck the IC name? Cant find anything on the net except your video here about that relay 🙂
  • Basic Trash: Ever thought of making something with Tamagotchis or other virtual pets?
  • devjock: Unless you can cobble together a somewhat stable oscillator out of discrete parts (some 4000 or 74 series logic, resistors, and varicaps might do the trick for cheap), or getting those oscillator chips in bulk, this might get expensive real fast with 50 of the lil monsters.My two cents; Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_organ and use that as the basis for an organ (electronic cat toys might be easier to pitch, and cheaper too), then you’re free to do other things with the furbies; I’d go with an insane percussion setup; you could dress ’em up as gremlin’s. They may not be pitchable, but I bet the samples can be flashed to contain whatever you want. Might be a cool drumsynth. Sequencer on the front, with each step triggering the eyes or something. Add some AR envelope followers and gate inputs, and you got yourself a frighteningly rythmic army of furbies that still retains much of it’s furby nature, but is somewhat better to control. These things can swamp a mix up fast without some volume control 🙂

    Cheers man, thanks for sharing the 1-voice guy, you’ll get max polyphony eventually!

  • Borgar: cool.
    Could you scan your crazy circuit manifesto for us synth diy dudes?
  • Wreckless Reto: This is great. You er a good man
  • Gijs: some kind of sample and hold circuit
  • Mandatory Namechange: I just lost it at the fact that you’ve had this ridiculous plan complete with concept drawings since 2011.. and now you’re going to do it! Holy shit YES. We need the furby organ.
  • Miles Flavel: Looks like you made a pretty cool glitch noise generator. Can’t wait to see how the overall project goes!
  • GonamStudio: U look like one of those synth electronic music pioneers back in the 70’s. Keep up the goodwork