Hacking the Tux Droid

Rockhopper writes "Ars Technica has a combo review/hack guide for the Tux Droid, a programmable penguin. 'Tux is completely programmable at practically every level, and all of the source code of the firmware and software used by the droid is available from Kysoh's version control repository. There are several ways to program the droid's behavior, ranging from modifying the firmware to coding a gadget in Python.' There's a sample Python script that will cause Tux to speak IRC messages out loud when the user's name is mentioned."

Link for those who don't actually know what it is

[sleeponthemic]

I didn't know. http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/rc/9df0/ [thinkgeek.com]

you'd think it runs Linux

[gradedcheese]

I was curious so I looked up the embedded system inside the robot, it's an 8-bit Atmel AVR with supporting hardware. I figured that the Tux-shaped robot would at least be running Linux internally, for example they could have used a Gumstix board or the like. That said, AVR development is pretty fun (and you get to use gcc rather than some vendor tools) and this thing looks like a neat embedded toy.

Re:Tux' voice

[antdude]

Probably, but with difficulties. See TTS Voices section in http://www.tuxisalive.com/downloads [tuxisalive.com] ...

Re:Droid!

[Ethanol-fueled]

HAHAHAHHAAHAH! For those of you who don't get it, the parent's comment was an allusion to duckjob [audio4fun.com].