Tutorial: Teddy Ruxpin Rebuild – Hack your Teddy with Personalization
Check out the latest Adafruit Learning System guide from Erin St Blaine: turn a vintage 2017 Teddy Ruxpin bear into a brand new personalized stuffy. The engineers at Adafruit have figured out how to overwrite the native voice files with custom audio files you record yourself. Erin has turned her Teddy Ruxpin into a Figment the Dragon doll, and added personalized recordings from Grandma and Grandpa so her baby nieces can hear them read a personalized story any time they want. She even recruited ChatGPT to create custom content using the girls’ names, to make the new toy even more special.
From the guide:
Come Dream with Me Tonight…
Teddy Ruxpin is a very cool animatronic talking teddy bear toy, originally from the 1980s and re-released in 2017. Kids absolutely love this guy — he tells stories, sings songs, and captivates kids’ attention for hours.
These days, Teddy Ruxpin toys are available on eBay for a fraction of their original cost. The animatronics work great, and there’s no other source we’ve found for a complete animatronic system for such an affordable price.
The amazing engineers at Adafruit have figured out how to unpack Teddy’s code and upload our own voice files and eye graphics. And since he’s such a standard size for a stuffy, his skin is changeable too. I’ve put my Teddy Ruxpin’s insides into a Figment the Dragon stuffy, and he fits almost perfectly.
I have two baby nieces who love dragons, so I got their grandparents to record audio files for this toy, so they can hear a story read by Grandma or Grandpa whenever they wish.
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