Per a number of requests from Pokémon Go fans, Pawel Zadrożniak’s “Floppotron” is back, and this time it’s playing the Pokémon theme song. By repurposing 64 floppy disk drives, eight hard disks, and two scanners in his native Poland, Zadrożniak created a computer symphony that he’s now using to play everyone’s favorite pocket monster track.
The Floppotron produces music when magnetic heads inside the individual pieces of hardware are moved by stepper motors. By sliding the heads at at a particular frequency, a specific sound is produced.
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Zadroożniak wrote a script in Python 2.7 that controls the motors while he was bored in class when he was a student at Poland’s AGH University of Science and Technology, according to his website.
While Zadrożniak’s technology isn’t novel, he has perfected his craft to produce some impressive tunes since he first began working with floppy disk drives in 2011. Zadrożniak first gained some internet street cred when he repurposed two floppy disk drives to play John Williams’ “Imperial March” from Star Wars. The YouTube video of the tune has been viewed millions of times.
Since then, he’s amassed a ton more hardware, and programmed his internet orchestra to play a number of crowd pleasers besides of Pokémon and Star Wars, like the theme from Hawaii Five-O and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
If you’re thinking about turning your old floppy disk drives into a new instrument too, you can check out tutorials here and here. Zadrożniak also explains his own method on his website.
