Floppotron

The Floppotron is a musical instrument created by Polish engineer Paweł Zadrożniak.

It is made of a synchronized array of obsolete computer hardware programmed to play tunes. The current Floppotron 2.0 build sports 64 floppy drives, 8 hard drives, and a pair of flatbed scanners. The net effect is of a robot orchestra.[1]

Development

First version

The first version of the instrument was built in 2011 and consisted of two floppy drives and an ATMega microcontroller. The sound is generated by the magnetic head moved by its stepper motor. To make a specific sound, the head must be moved with appropriate frequency.[2]

The invention gained public notoriety with a demonstration of the Imperial March posted on YouTube achieving more than 6 million visits.[3]

2.0 version

In 2016 Paweł Zadrożniak improved his previous version of the Floppotron with 64 floppy drives, 8 hard drives, and two flatbed scanners. Every column of 8 FDDs is connected to one 8-channel controller built on ATMega16 microcontroller; the HD is controlled by 2 push-pull outputs built with discrete SMD MOSFETs. And the Scanner head controllers were built using off-the-shelf boards – an Arduino Uno.[4]

Operating principles

Any 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 scan an image or perform read/write operations on a magnetic disk. The sound generated by a motor depends on its driving speed: the higher the frequency, the greater the pitch. Hard disks use a magnet and a coil to position the head. When voltage is supplied for long enough, the head speeds up and hits the mechanical stop making the "drum hit” sound.[4]

The Floppotron translates MIDI music files into a series of discrete commands telling the devices when to buzz, click, and remain silent.[1]

Song covers

As of April 2019 there are more than one hundred songs played with the Floppotron in Zadrożniak's YouTube page.[5] The songs include Queen's "Bohemian Rapsody", Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", White Stripes's "Seven Nation Army", Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams" and Michael Jackson's "Thriller".[6]

gollark: Fun idea: for the more centralized advertising systems people seem to be considering, instead of buying slots for a certain time, run an automated auction every time each ad display or whatever displays a different thing to decide what to display.
gollark: I've been doing yet more ~~debugging~~ deintendedfeatureing.
gollark: Anything interesting going on ingame?
gollark: Hi, people who exist!
gollark: I don't even mean if you're an AI or a person, I mean: how can you prove that you are actually real?

References
  1. "Behold the Floppotron, a Computer Hardware Orchestra". Mentalfloss. Minute Media. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  2. "Evil floppy drives". Silent's Homepage. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  3. "Floppy music DUO - Imperial march". YouTube. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  4. "Return of the Floppies". Silent's Homepage. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  5. "Paweł Zadrożniak videos". YouTube. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  6. "Halloween's Extra Spooky With Michael Jackson's Thriller Played On Outdated Zombie Technology". Gizmodo. Retrieved 12 May 2019.


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