chebe | Gizmo Furby, beautiful on the inside

Inspired by Furlexa I decided to finish dismantling my Gizmo (a friend of Furby) with a view to upgrading it to a Raspberry Pi, and maybe play around with a sound/voice interface. Not to work with Amazon, but rather because I never did get that Teddy Ruxpin I always wanted. *wistful sigh*

Gizmo (1999) and their friend Furby (1998) are basically the same creature, apart from the outer skin and eye appearance. So the process for disassembling is mostly the same.

Except, Gizmo has larger ears (the 'bones' having two holes). To support this there are ear casings on top of the carapace/shell, screwed together. So when taking the carapace apart there are the four screws found in a regular Furby, but also a fifth screw in the ear casings. After removing the screw the ear casings come away in two parts. You must remove the ear casings to get at the fourth/head screw.

Gizmo, skinned, shell intact
Photo by chebe

Gizmo, skinned, ears shells screw
Photo by chebe

Gizmo, skinned, ears shells come apart
Photo by chebe

There are also two rubber sheathed wires that act as arm supports screwed onto the carapace. But these don't do anything and aren't connected to anything, so you can leave them attached to the carapace as you remove it.

Otherwise the only difference I noticed was that my wires are different colours from any description I could find. Which is not as many as there should have been because many of the links are now dead. In the hopes of making this easier for other people here are some detailed pictured with wires labelled.

Wiring
Red and Black, two pin header; Motor (MOTOR)
Two Yellow and one Green, soldered to board; Tilt switch (1, 3, 2)
Two Grey, four pin header; Tummy rub button (S2)
Two Orange, four pin header; Speaker (SP)
Two Grey, wrapped around base, soldered to board; Reset (S1)

Gizmo, skinned, opened, wires labelled, left
Photo by chebe

Two Grey, wrapped around base, screw terminals in base; Reset
One Yellow, one Green, soldered to board; Back pet button (S3)
One Red, one Black, two pin header; Cam home switch (S5)

Gizmo, skinned, opened, wires labelled, back
Photo by chebe

One Yellow, one Green, long floating wires, soldered to middle of board; Microphone (MIC)
Two Green, six pin header; Photodiode light sensor (R29)
One Red, one Black, six pin header; Infrared transmitter (D2 + -)
One Brown, one White, six pin header; Infrared receiver (Q3 - +)
One Yellow, one Green, four pin header; Gear encoder interrupt (Q5 + -)
Two White, four pin header; Mouth/tongue feed button (S4)

Gizmo, skinned, opened, wires labelled, right
Photo by chebe

One Red, one Black, soldered to board, terminals in battery pack; Battery power (B- B+)

Gizmo, skinned, opened, wires labelled, right/front
Photo by chebe

Removing the circuit board
To remove the circuit board you need to remove all the jumper cables (rocking them side-to-side seemed to work best), and cut a few of the wires that are soldered directly to the board. You may also find it helpful to remove all the hot glue.

Pull the Motor and Tummy rub button/speaker jumpers, cut the grey Reset wires.
Pull the Cam home switch, cut the Back pet wires.
Pull the Light sensor/IR transmitter/IR receiver and Gear controls/Mouth feed button jumpers, cut the Battery power wires.
We'll be leaving the Tilt switch and Microphone on the circuit board.

You'll notice Gizmo/Furby doesn't tilt forward very much. When they do you can see a spring between the circuit board and the battery pack. You can also just about see the screws holding the circuit board in place. In order to get at them you need to remove the Tummy rub button/Speaker assembly from the front of the creature. It's held on with just two screws.

Gizmo, skinned, opened, tilted forward, back
Photo by chebe

Without the Speaker assembly in the way the hinge can be opened up fully. The spring will fall out, that's okay, just keep track of the two pieces. You can now also remove the three screws keeping the circuit board in place.

Gizmo, skinned, opened, speaker removed, hinge opened, underside of circuit board
Photo by chebe

With that done your friend will be in pieces; circuit board, battery pack and hinge, motor and gears assembly, and speaker assembly. As well as the carapace and skin. Now you can begin reassembling them as thou wilt.

Gizmo, skinned, opened, disassembled
Photo by chebe