Create "music" with an old FDD and ATmega168

Once again Michael Kohn has shown us something different with electronics and related items. In this article he shows how to use an old floppy disk drive as a source for noises that can be arranged into tunes. The drive is controlled by an Atmel ATmega168, and Michael has included the source code files and schematic to recreate this sound effects device. Here it is in action:

In th future Michael will document his guitar-controlled FDD music device - something else to look forward to. In the meanwhile, check out his project page for the details here. And for more news, updates and items of interest, please follow us on twitter, Facebook and Google+.

If you're looking for a source of better-quality sound and voice effects, check out the HT8950 single chip CMOS LSI voice modulator IC which provides seven steps to shift the frequency of an input voice, producing a dramatic change in the output. The HT8950 provides two special effects: vibrato and robot. The vibrato effect is generated by alternating the frequency of an input signal up and down at a rate of 8Hz. The robot function, on the other hand, converts an input voice into a robot voice.

Both effects can be selected depending on which pin is triggered, either ROB or VIB. For the output frequency level shifting, the chips provide seven steps which can be selected from the two groups of pins namely, SW0, SW1 and SW2 for electronic direct selection and ROB, TGD, TGU and VIB for push button selection.

The HT8950 include a built-in microphone amplifier with an internal bias, an 8-bit A/D converter, a built-in SRAM as well as a current output type 8-bit D/A converter. The 8-bit A/D and D/A converters with a sampling rate of 8kHz ensures a high quality and high S/N ratio output voice. So for more information, see the product page.