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Post by lachlant1984 on Apr 2, 2023 4:37:59 GMT -7
Is there any advice on repairing a Backpack Toys Teddy? I just got one whose in really good shape but his bottom jaw seems to move only a little bit. His motor is also quite noisy and I think I hear clicking when his mouth moves. Is that normal? I've had a similar issue with my BackPack Toys Teddy, though the problem I had was caused by me being careless with it. You say the motor is noisy, that's quite a subjective thing to say, so it's hard to gauge whether the motor is noisier than it should be. The clicking noise you hear could be the mechanism that moves Teddy's mouth, it could be that a belt or pully or something it out of place, the clicking could also be caused by whatever manipulates Teddy Ruxpin's mouth. All that said, the mechanism in that Teddy Ruxpin makes quite a bit of noise as it is When the motor moves slowling it does make an odd buzzing noise. I suspect that noise is the circuitry that drives the motor.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Apr 2, 2023 2:18:54 GMT -7
Hi everyone. In late 2021 I was using my 2017 Teddy Ruxpin and the batteries went flat. I changed them, and horror of horrors, Teddy Ruxpin wouldn't work after that. The power would come on and the eyes lit up, but he wouldn't speak or do anything else. Today I decided to try and get him going. I installed fresh batteries but still no joy. The power light comes on and I can turn Bluetooth on. When I turn Bluetooth on the green light flashes and my iPhone can see Teddy and the app can connect. So I concluded something was wrong with either the flash memory or the data on the flash memory. Tonight I connected Teddy to my PC and switched him on. Windows made the USB device connected sound and I saw a device designated as drive F in Windows Explorer. The icon for drive F didn't indicate storage capacity or remaining storage space. I took that as a bad sign. Double clicking on the drive icon displayed an error message F is not accessible. Incorrect Function. Has anyone ever seen an error message like that with a disk drive device? I tried to format the drive and also run an error check but to no avail. So I'd say the flash memory has completely failed. In early 2020 I had an incident where Teddy Ruxpin fell off my desk and hit the window ledge behind it. Teddy wouldn't work after that, turning him on and off did nothing, neither did pressing the reset button. Removal and reinstallation of the batteries brought him back to life. I'm wondering if the fall caused some physical damage somewhere, I wonder if the flash memory chip has started coming off the PCB. I haven't tried to open Teddy up, I may ask my sister's boyfriend to take a look at him, but it's possible it's the end of the line for that Teddy Ruxpin. I was hoping that running an error check might fix things, but no. Clearly the toy is still operating in terms of it's microprocessor, but the flash storage is bad. Hmm.
Thanks everyone.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Jul 25, 2022 15:15:39 GMT -7
hi Rich.
Sorry to hear you've had this problem. What was the initial problem you had? I have to say that last year I too discovered that my Teddy Ruxpin isn't working correctly, but I haven't yet tried to investigate the cause of the problem. Regarding disk formatting, I'd think your best bet is to use FAT16, FAT32 may work, but I doubt formats like XFAT will work. Can you get any of your stories to work? You might be able to unlock them again using the smartphone app, you shouldn't need to pay for them again if you already have paid for them. I hope this helps, as I say, I've not had this experience myself.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Feb 10, 2020 14:33:55 GMT -7
I'd never even thought about that. Mind you I know nothing about nor do I have any interest in, Cabbage Patch kids.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Feb 7, 2020 18:46:49 GMT -7
He didn't really offer anything knew and just utilised modern technology to deliver the same thing that he always has. Obviously that's his main focus as "the original story-telling teddy" but the technology exists to do so much more with him now. Why couldn't he interact when he wasn't telling stories? Play games? Help you with your ABC's and Maths? I think kids expect more these days. On top of that, they changed so much of the original design that he no longer really looks like Teddy Ruxpin (maybe Teddy Ruxpin's weird younger cousin?) and so loses his nostalgic appeal to the 80's kids. I don't mind the eyes but reckon they look creepy in the dark when he's turned on and creepy in the light when he's turned off. Really don't think LCD eyes are the way to go. I agree that educational focused games to assist in literacy and numeracy etc would have been wonderful and could have been done well, but sadly it was not to be.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Feb 7, 2020 18:45:13 GMT -7
I'm somehow not shocked that they never held true to their promises. They didn't listen to any of us fans in the beginning, so I doubt they even care now. They made their money and they're out moving on to the next cash grab. Hopefully the next company to pick up the franchise actually cares about the fans and releases all of the stories with a Teddy design that doesn't look like a flat potato. It would be lovely if a new version of Teddy Ruxpin were to be released and it met and satisfied everyone's requirements, but it's so hard to satisfy everyone who's into anything really, not just Teddy Ruxpin. It is a pity that they didn't really act upon people's comments. We don't know if a new version of Teddy Ruxpin will ever be release or not, there's just no way of knowing without being in contact with the staff at Alchemy, and they may eventually choose not to release a new version of Teddy Ruxpin. We just can't say anything for sure until something credible happens.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Feb 1, 2020 3:54:48 GMT -7
It's true that WCT did more with Teddy Ruxpin than BackPack Toys did, don't get me wrong, the BPT version of Teddy was OK and I do like it, but WCT did more in terms of the Hug & Sing toys, and of course the library of stories for the main Teddy Ruxpin toy, be it a slightly meager library.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Feb 1, 2020 3:51:15 GMT -7
Yes, what you say about 9 pulses is true, because the control track needs to control Teddy Ruxpin, but also Grubby. If you look through the information on wwww.teddyruxpinonline.org, there used to be an article about how the PPM system worked, but I haven't looked at those articles in quite some time and I understand the website has been updated over the years, so I don't know if that article exists anymore.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Jan 30, 2020 21:22:43 GMT -7
Hold on. Off topic, but the last few characters of your post like like Braille characters, I don't know if you realised that or not.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Jan 30, 2020 17:21:57 GMT -7
What I can say for certain is that the original Teddy Ruxpin uses Pulse Position Modulation, PPM, later versions of Teddy Ruxpin use FM to drive the motors. The animation control track on original Teddy Ruxpin cassettes sounds very much like a lawn mower, can your frequency generator make such a noise? I couldn't tell you what frequencies Teddy Ruxpin uses though
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Post by lachlant1984 on Jan 30, 2020 2:44:42 GMT -7
Really interesting question there, I've seen the whole cartoon show, but I can't say I've seen any animals to speak of in the context you use.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Jan 27, 2020 14:35:48 GMT -7
No worries.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Jan 26, 2020 4:35:15 GMT -7
Hey everyone. Thought I'd quickly discuss backing up the files on your 2017 Teddy Ruxpin, since WCT aren't making them anymore, it would be a good idea to back up the files on your Teddy Ruxpin in case something should happen to the data. This is how I do things, you may do things differently depending on your computer. For this procedure you'll need either a desktop or laptop computer, it can be running Windows or Mac OS, I presume you'll also be able to do this with Linux. Of course your computer must have USB type A ports on it as most do, if you're using a computer that has only USB Type C ports on it, you'll probably need to buy a dongle, unless of course you can get USB Type C to Micro USB cables. And lastly, you'll need a Micro USB cable. It's my experience that not all Micro USB cables support data transfer, sone only support power for a device, so you must make sure the Micro USB cable you intend to use does in fact support data transfer, otherwise you will not be able to connect your Teddy Ruxpin to your computer. Here's what you do. Turn on your computer and connect the USB cable to your computer, and also to the Micro USB socket located on Teddy Ruxpin's back near the power on indicator light. Turn Teddy Ruxpin on. Note: Teddy Ruxpin must be fitted with working batteries. At this point Teddy Ruxpin should be detected by your computer, and you should be able to access its flash memory, it should appear as a mass storage compatible disk device, which you can access in the same way you'd access data on any other storage media, such as a floppy disk, CD, DVD, or a USB flash drive. If you're using Windows, then Windows will assign Teddy Ruxpin a drive letter, in my case, it's drive F. If you're using a Mac, you'll see and icon appear on your desktop, I believe the same thing happens if you're a Linux user. Open the icon for Teddy Ruxpin and you'll see a folder called Books. Inside the Books folder are all the files that make Teddy Ruxpin work, all the files have a .bin file extension, you should see files with names like Idle.bin, Intro,bin, Story01.bin and so on. Make a copy of the Books folder with all the files inside it, and store it somewhere safe. Do not delete the files from Teddy Ruxpin's internal memory, if you do, he won't work. Do not change the files in any way unless you know what you're doing, otherwise you may experience unpredictable results. When you've finished, use your computer's safely remove hardware/eject storage device option, turn Teddy Ruxpin off and disconnect the cables. I haven't tested this myself, but I would like to hope that if files on Teddy Ruxpin do get deleted or in some other way corrupt or damaged, you should be able to restore proper functionality by copying the files you backed up onto Teddy Ruxpin again, just make sure they're in the Books folder. There's no need for any special file transfer software or anything like that, just use the methods you're comfortable with when transferring data on your computer. Note: As I understand it, it's not possible to use your phone to copy stories to Teddy Ruxpin, this needs to be done using a computer. If anyone else can think of anything to add to this topic, please do so, if you've had any experiences with transferring new stories to your Teddy Ruxin, I'd like to hear them.
Thanks everyone.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Jan 25, 2020 17:53:27 GMT -7
I do see differences where the components are and I think the number of components differs too. I don't know anything about circuit board designs or schematic diagrams, but in general circuit board designers improve their designs over time, components get consolidated and sometimes the component count on a circuit board get reduced as designs improve. Also, cost cutting is a factor too.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Jan 25, 2020 16:06:55 GMT -7
I would suggest that anyone with a Wicked Cool Toys Teddy Ruxpin may want to back up the data on their Teddy Ruxpin, to do this, you can connect your Teddy Ruxpin to a computer via USB, and make a copy of the files that are stored on Teddy Ruxpin's internal flash memory, this includes all the stories you've bought for your Teddy Ruxpin.
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