For my OSCON brief, I’m hooking up an Arduino to a Furby. Got the Arduino, got the Furby. Have had a near panic attack at realizing that what I’m lacking is electronics expertise. The past few days have been a whirlwind of loosely analogous electronic circuits, trying them out, and dashes of terror followed by waves of relief as first something doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work some more, I worry about whether I’ve fried the equipment, and then finally something works. The thing I haven’t yet crossed my terror boundary on yet is soldering… all of my wiring has been through unplugging, connecting in via male or female connectors (see, I’ve already learned something!), and testing to see what’s different…

Tonight, though, I had to cut a wire. Two, actually. My Furby is now dead, though hopefully only temporarily. I’ve severed his ground and power wires (black and red, pretty conventional, I’ve discovered), and will now to attempt to splice them them with new wires that’ll plug into the bread board connected to my Arduino. The bread board has its transistor and resistor and diode all nicely arranged, and pretested with a little electric motor. Here’s hoping my Franken Furby arises again! Or my conference talk next week will be slightly different than I’d planned…..