Surely today, especially if you are of a certain age, you will remember those Furby's, a kind of pets that became fashionable a few years ago and that curiously, personally, I do not know very well why, they have passed through several generations since truly perhaps what most attracted their attention was their peculiar aesthetics, I even know people to whom I gave some of 'creeps', especially when they pretended to talk to you.
The latter is precisely the quality that a community user has wanted to promote in this interesting project, especially at a technical level. As you may be imagining, what he has worked on is literally getting this particular Furby, or furlexa as he has baptized it, it becomes much more real and interactive and for that there is nothing better than to provide this particular unit with a Amazon Echo inside.
Furlexa, a very interesting project to carry out this Christmas
Inside, the author of this project has decided to continue having the same animatronic scheme with which the doll was endowed at the time by its developers. To this is added a Raspberry Pi Zero W which is responsible for running the Alexa service and other components such as a speaker so that, instead of the sound of Furby itself, we really talk to Alexa, so the functionality becomes much more interesting.
If you are interested in carrying out this project, the truth is that it would be a very interesting idea to carry out this Christmas, to tell you that you have a link right at the end of this same post where you can see step by step how to build your own Furlexa. On the other hand, in terms of materials, in addition to a Furby or a similar product and the Raspberry Pi Zero W, you will need a hat Pimoroni Speaker pHAT, USB microphone or with a stepper motor driver by Adafruit.
Further information: howchoo