Make Music from Old Hard Drives
By Poppy Mosbacher. Posted
This article was originally published as part of HackSpace magazine, which has since been incorporated into Raspberry Pi Official Magazine.
Instructables user Jedi1983 has repurposed old hard disks to amplify music. The circuit in a hard disk drive has similarities to standard speakers, as they both use a coil and a permanent magnet.
The video below shows the hard disks in action:
“The actuator arm position influences the sound level, ” explains jedi1983. “In my case I wanted to see the actuators arms moving to the music. Music fidelity was not my goal, so they are free to move.”
Jedi1983 built a wooden sound box and placed it under the hard drives to improve the sound quality, although in hindsight they say “it would have been better to build the box in the shape of a flaring horn.”
Instructions to build your own hard disk speakers are available here.
Poppy is a maker and writer. She loves getting tech into the hands of people who do traditional crafts. She is helping set up a makerspace in Devon and was a director of BuildBrighton makerspace.
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