The Teddy Ruxpin FAQ (Text Image) -Image-

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<From a usenet post by "ruxpin@netcom.com"
The animation data system used for Teddy and Grubby is much the same as the 8 channel digital proportional system used for model airplanes. There are 9 short pulses in a row, the time gap between successive pulses is the information for each channel.
  • Channel 1 is not used.Channel 2,3,4 are Teddy's eyes, upper and lower jaw.Channel 5 controls if audio comes from Grubby, Teddy or both.
  • Channel 6,7 and 8 control Grubby's eyes, upper and lower jaw.
The data is recorded 'raw' on the tape, no sub-carrier is used. Because of this, polarity and shape of the signal is important for reliable operation. By modern standards it is quite a crude system, but electronics were less sophisticated in 1985. Incidentally, Mother Goose, Mickey and Snoopy use a similar system which has 16 channels. The last 8 contain a key code that makes a tape work only in the right toy. A custom decoder chip was used in them that recognizes the 'key'.The small Teddy Ruxpin uses a single servo, and has only one data channel - I believe it is frequency modulated, I never picked it apart.

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    Teddy Ruxpin's tape player is actually a stereo player. The prerecorded tapes have animation data recorded along side the audio tracks. The right channel contains the data, the left channel the audio programme. Putting an ordinary tape in Teddy Ruxpin often won't work. There are two reasons for this, one is obvious, the other isn't. An ordinary cassette tape that wasn't specifically made for Teddy Ruxpin doesn't contain anything that his electronics can decipher as animation data (Or atleast enough to be coordinated). Second the 'spine' of the cassette housing has some additional tabs knocked out  (Like very high bias metal tapes) that corresponds to a microswitch trigger. If this switch isn't moved Teddy will not animate.

 

Patents for the first version of Teddy Ruxpin
Little Blue Button! -Image- -Link-

 

 

Lil' blue button

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3/23/14