When hackers try to fix toys: a practical, very fun story about tweaking and extending the Speak&Spell. 📜🗣️🔨🤖🐿️

Security researcher and father Jeremy Trimble shared his research earlier this year on the proprietary system behind the well-known and popular kids’ device. It appears that if you have a passion for hardware hacking, you can turn almost any electronic device into a great research project.

From dumping the flash to understanding its structure to adding new voices and features to the box - all the details can be found in the attached presentation. It’s very interesting if you’re into low-tech hacking.

But what about the repair? The only ‘repair’ it needed from the start was to reseat the ribbon cable. The rest was… just for fun!

Enjoy the paper, and feel free to share it with your colleagues—especially if they have kids. :)

More details:

Hacking Childhood Memories: A tale of reverse engineering, audio encodings, and never growing up [PDF]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cxcTx238dHBi12RUCdkm-_-K1b-miUd8/view