HOW FURBY TOY WORKS
All of you must have seen this toy before. It was really popular in the 1980s till 1990s. This owl-toy is known as furby. Today i am going to explain how electric components inside it works as well as what the electirc components are. This is actually a research for the journal in the topic how electronic components are being used in running the toys.
These are pictures of the interior of a Furby toy.
Transistors A transistor is an electronic component used in a circuit to control a large amount of current or voltage using a small amount of voltage or current. It does so by sandwiching one semiconductor between two other semiconductors. The current is transferred across a resistor which has high resistance to electricity.
Electrical components, wirings, camshaft
Furby is mainly made up of gears, camshaft and electrical components. They have a single revisable motor which moves its eyelids, eyes, ears, mouth, and butt. The cams which move the eyes, ears, mouth, etc are all in a single driveshaft. A full rotation of the driveshaft would put it through all combination of motions. The sequence in which the body parts of Furby moves in determined by the position of patterns of the cam.
Example of a random camshaft
Sequences of animated motions of Furby are determined by the degrees rotated either backwards or forward. For example, for Furby to dance, the shaft must be moved back and forth 20 degrees which will move Furby’s butt but not Furby’s eyes or ears. However, for Furby to dance, processes such as eat, sleep and blink must spin through before Furby dances as the positions can only be accessed sequentially or in sequence.
How this works?
As we can see, the cams (of different shape and sizes) are attached to the camshaft. Imagine when the camshaft rotates, the cams of different shape and size too, rotates. This rotation brings the cam up to the highest point and down to the lowest point when a full revolution is made. Notice that the different cams on the shaft have pointed edges pointing at different directions. When the follower is attached above the cam, the rise and fall of the cam will be more obvious. This application is then applied the Furby toy, causing its body parts to move in a pattern or sequentially.
MOTHERBOARD: The central or primary circuit board making up a complex electronic system. A motherboard allows all the parts of the toy to receive power and communicate with one another.
The motherboard works as the central or primary circuit board in a Furby toy which contains the controllers required to control standard peripheral devices such the sound player of a Furby which enables the toy to produce sound. All these chips that reside on the motherboard are known as the motherboard’s chipset.