Remember the famous floppy drives? They’re back… with multiplied force (yes, THAT „force”) and some friends!
I have bought some more drives in order to expand the previous project back in 2012, which spent four years in a carton box. Together with new floppy drives, some more hardware has arrived: hard disk and optical scanners. Now I have the whole computer hardware orchestra – 64 floppy drives, 8 hard disks and 2 scanners – The Floppotron.
How does it work? The principle is simple. Every device with an electric motor is able to generate a sound. Scanners and floppy drives use stepper motors to move the head with sensors which scans the image or performs read/write operations on a magnetic disk. The sound generated by a motor depends on driving speed. The higher the frequency, the greater the pitch. Hard disks use a magnet and a coil to tilt the head. When voltage is supplied for long enough, the head speeds up and hits the bound making the „drum hit” sound. The disk head coil can also be used as a speaker to play tones or even music, but… that would be too easy and too obvious.
Every column of 8 floppy drives is connected to one 8-channel controller built on ATMega16 microcontroller. One controller acts as one voice with envelope simulation – the higher the volume, the more drives are playing. This allows to make ADSR-like shape and simulate a musical instrument, like a piano (exponential decay) or string instrument (sine, „vibrato”). The boards which were made a few years ago, were designed as a stand-alone „players” with optional USB-to-UART bridge and was not intended to be chained. My goal was to re-use old stuff and get the job done as fast as possible, so I used the on-board ISP (which in fact is a SPI interface) connector to link 8 drivers in a SPI chain. Long SPI chain with unidirectional communication is not an example good and reliable design, but it did not require any hardware modification and took a minute to build a controller network, so let’s call it… good enough for this kind of project.
Scanner and disk head controllers share the same base with floppy controllers, but have a different „instrument interface”. For driving the coils, I used 2 push-pull outputs (H-bridge) built with discrete SMD MOSFETs. Scanner head controllers were built using of-the-shelf boards – an Arduino Uno (firmware also builds for ATMega328 using AVR-GCC / Atmel Studio; none of this Arduino crappy software and libraries was used) and L298 breakout to save time needed to draw and etch the boards. PC interface (another Arduino board) receives the data over UART (USB-UART), buffers the messages and keeps the timings while passing packets to „musical instruments” over SPI interface, so a Windows hiccup will not affect the playback. It can also be driven by anything else like Raspberry Pi, Android smartphone (with USB-UART or UART-over-Bluetooth adapter) or another microcontroller.
Host application was written in Python 2.7. I wrote it mostly on some boring lectures when I was still studying at the university, so it’s a one big mess, but… at least it does the job. It parses the simple language used for writing note sequences arranged in tracks tied to a specific controller / channel and merges those parallel tracks into one command list which is transferred over COM port. It can also partially generate „song script” from MIDI file which speeds up the „song porting” process.
All hail to the superpowered Floppotron!
Of course, there are musical stuffed-shirts who will simply call it an electronic cover band. SHAME on them! I think Einstein & Tesla would have had this, had they only known it was going to be possible. Congratulations on this accomplishment!
[…] 2011 gab es schon mal ein ähnliches Projekt. Damals aber mit nur 2 Floppy Drives. Nun hat es Paweł Zadrożniak dann doch nochmal in den Fingern gejuckt um dem ganzen nochmal die Krone aufgesetzt. Die neue […]
[…] lyssna på när The Flopptron spelar upp Nirvanas "Smells like teen spirit". tack Stefan silent.org.pl + showText('352361'); var img = document.createElement('img') img.src = […]
Absolutely WONDERFUL!! I’ve never seen anything like it and I hope I come across more of your work. Is there any way I can follow your progress in the future?
[…] Like Teen Spirit.” Also, be sure to check out Zadrożniak’s home page, where he describes the process behind the Floppotron’s operation in considerable detail. Comments comments Posted in […]
[…] Pawel Zadrozniak è il suo progetto “The Floppotron” ci regalano questo video decisamente curioso in cui viene eseguita una versione “hardware” della famosa “Smell Like Teen Spirit” dei Nirvana. Maggiori informazioni disponibili sulla pagina ufficiale. […]
Hi there, my name is Eoin and I’m a journalist with Storyful. I have a media opportunity for your video here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32kWuKysE6A and would really appreciate if you could drop me an email on editor AT storyful DOT com. Thanks!
I’ve just saw the two videos and it’s sounds amazing! If you can, you should create some original music, or collaborate with someone to do so.
I’ve been subscribed to your channel for years and I was surprised when I saw that you uploaded something. As a request, could you make The Floppotron play Around the World of Daft Punk? Also Bohemian Rhapsody would some awesome too. Keep up the work, and seriously you should feel very proud of this
This is awesome! I am in love with this!! Super original, well done.
[…] フロッピーディスクドライブ、ハードディスク、スキャナーという音楽とは一見何の関係もないアイテムを使って、映画「スター・ウォーズ」シリーズのオープニングで流れる「スター・ウォーズのテーマ」を演奏する猛者が登場しました。Return of the Floppies » Silent's Homepagehttp://silent.org.pl/home/2016/07/06/return-of-the-floppies/フロッピーディスクドライブで演奏といっても意味がわからないと思うので、まずは以下のムービーを見てください。The Floppotron – YouTube […]
Hello. Any plans on open sourcing this or selling a „Floppotron Kit”?
All hail to the superpowered Floppotron!
Of course, there are musical stuffed-shirts who will simply call it an electronic cover band. SHAME on them! I think Einstein & Tesla would have had this, had they only known it was going to be possible. Congratulations on this accomplishment!
[…] 2011 gab es schon mal ein ähnliches Projekt. Damals aber mit nur 2 Floppy Drives. Nun hat es Paweł Zadrożniak dann doch nochmal in den Fingern gejuckt um dem ganzen nochmal die Krone aufgesetzt. Die neue […]
[…] lyssna på när The Flopptron spelar upp Nirvanas "Smells like teen spirit". tack Stefan silent.org.pl + showText('352361'); var img = document.createElement('img') img.src = […]
[…] silent.org.pl + […]
[…] a video posted to his blog on Wednesday, Zadrożniak shows off what he calls the “Floppotron,” a large assembly that […]
[…] says at his Silent.org website, “How does it work? The principle is simple. Every device with an electric motor is able […]
Absolutely WONDERFUL!! I’ve never seen anything like it and I hope I come across more of your work. Is there any way I can follow your progress in the future?
[…] a video posted to his blog on Wednesday, Zadrożniak shows off what he calls the “Floppotron”, a large assembly […]
[…] a video posted to his blog on Wednesday, Zadrożniak shows off what he calls the “Floppotron,” a large […]
Just another piece of evidence that music is mathetical.
I saw the videos and somewhere you asked for a suggestion. I would really love to hear the Axel F theme (link below)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4kWpi2HnPU
always loved the song and think it is well suited to your rig.
[…] He also makes the Floppotron play Smells Like Teen Spirit and talks more about the Floppotron on his blog. […]
[…] Zadrozniak explica en su blog personal como este proyecto es en realidad una evolución de uno mucho más antiguo de […]
[…] a video posted to his blog on Wednesday, Zadrożniak shows off what he calls the “Floppotron,” a large assembly that […]
[…] a video posted to his blog on Wednesday, Zadrożniak shows off what he calls the “Floppotron,” a large assembly that […]
[…] Like Teen Spirit.” Also, be sure to check out Zadrożniak’s home page, where he describes the process behind the Floppotron’s operation in considerable detail. Comments comments Posted in […]
[…] Pawel Zadrozniak è il suo progetto “The Floppotron” ci regalano questo video decisamente curioso in cui viene eseguita una versione “hardware” della famosa “Smell Like Teen Spirit” dei Nirvana. Maggiori informazioni disponibili sulla pagina ufficiale. […]
[…] Zadrozniak explica en su blog personal como este proyecto es en realidad una evolución de uno mucho más antiguo de […]
I would like to hear „Computer Music” from Kraftwerk… obviously 😉
[…] Zadrozniak explica en su blog personal como este propósito es en realidad una evolución de 1 mucho más antiguo de […]
[…] Zadrozniak explica en su blog personal como este proyecto es en realidad una evolución de uno mucho más antiguo de […]
This rig screams for a Nine Inch Nails cover. The Becoming would be amazing.
[…] Zadrozniak explica en su blog personal como este proyecto es en realidad una evolución de uno mucho más antiguo de […]
[…] Zadrozniak explica en su blog personal como este proyecto es en realidad una evolución de uno mucho más antiguo de […]
[…] Zadrozniak explica en su blog personal como este proyecto es en realidad una evolución de uno mucho más antiguo de […]
[…] Zadrozniak explica en su blog personal como este proyecto es en realidad una evolución de uno mucho más antiguo de […]
Brilliant. I really love this work. Waht about the theme of Star Wars next time?
[…] Zadrozniak explica en su blog personal como este proyecto es en realidad una evolución de uno mucho más antiguo de […]
[…] Zadrozniak explica en su blog personal como este proyecto es en realidad una evolución de uno mucho más antiguo de […]
[…] Zadrozniak explica en su blog personal como este proyecto es en realidad una evolución de uno mucho más antiguo de […]
[…] Zadrozniak explica en su blog personal como este proyecto es en realidad una evolución de uno mucho más […]
[…] Zadrozniak explica en su blog personal como este proyecto es en realidad una evolución de uno mucho más antiguo de […]
[…] Zadrozniak explica en su blog personal como este proyecto es en realidad una evolución de uno mucho más antiguo de […]
[…] Zadrozniak explica en su blog personal como este proyecto es en realidad una evolución de uno mucho más antiguo de […]
[…] more on Zadrozniak’s website. video 2016-07-08 admin window.___gcfg = {lang: 'en-US'}; (function(w, d, s) { function go(){ […]
[…] Zadrozniak explica en su blog personal como este proyecto es en realidad una evolución de uno mucho más […]
[…] to Pawel’s website, he used 64 floppy drives, 8 hard disks, and 2 scanners to build his “hardware […]
Brilliant sound harmony from a collection of devices. I love what you are doing. Thanks
[…] Return of the Floppieson Silent’s Homepage […]
[…] can read all about the Floppotron here, or watch it jam out […]
Здравствуйте!
Намерены Вы в скором времени выложить схему подключения и программную часть?
Witamy!
Zamierzają wkrótce położyć okablowanie i część oprogramowania?
[…] Return of the Floppies on Silent’s Homepage […]
[…] Return of the Floppies on Silent’s Homepage […]
[…] Return of the Floppies on Silent’s Homepage […]
Hi there, my name is Eoin and I’m a journalist with Storyful. I have a media opportunity for your video here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32kWuKysE6A and would really appreciate if you could drop me an email on editor AT storyful DOT com. Thanks!
[…] Return of the Floppies on Silent’s Homepage […]
I’ve just saw the two videos and it’s sounds amazing! If you can, you should create some original music, or collaborate with someone to do so.
I’ve been subscribed to your channel for years and I was surprised when I saw that you uploaded something. As a request, could you make The Floppotron play Around the World of Daft Punk? Also Bohemian Rhapsody would some awesome too. Keep up the work, and seriously you should feel very proud of this